


so i'm the dragon (big deal)

by SummerFrost



Series: Bartending AU [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anger, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parenting, Bartenders, Blood, Character Study, Codependency, Cunnilingus, Dissociation, F/F, Featuring, Found Family, Friends with Benefits (and regrettably some feelings), Healing, Homicidal Ideation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Intrusive Thoughts, Nightmares, Outdoor Sex, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Pegging, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Renfri is feral, Repression, Rough Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Yennefer of Vengerberg's canonical unicorn fetish, callous discussions of a suicide attempt, see a/n for details, they all make it to the coast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:27:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: If Renfri were straight and also someone who believed she needed a relationship to have a meaningful existence, she'd probably marry Geralt and not totally hate her life.Luckily she's neither of those things, so she's fucking Geralt's girlfriend instead.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Renfri | Shrike, Renfri | Shrike/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Bartending AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647292
Comments: 170
Kudos: 951





	so i'm the dragon (big deal)

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaah okay, firstly, please read the tags carefully before you dig in; Renfri's not actually more fucked up than Geralt, but she IS significantly more brutal about it. So the tone's grittier than part one. Spoiler-y details about some of the bigger/more common trigger warnings are in the end note.
> 
> So much gratitude to soundslikepenance and calypso_mary, who both beta'd. I love Renfri and I loved writing this fic and I love y'all most of all <3
> 
> The title is from Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out by Richard Siken.

If Renfri were straight and also someone who believed she needed a relationship to have a meaningful existence, she'd probably marry Geralt and not totally hate her life. 

Luckily she's neither of those things, so she's fucking Geralt's girlfriend instead.

The story starts way earlier, though. When she was six or seventeen or a fetus lots of people would've preferred to have aborted—but sometimes she thinks it started the first and only time she and Geralt fucked.

The thing is that Geralt was the first person who ever touched her who she could've said no to. And she's pretty sure he'd already had sex, but she doubts he'd ever cried during.

(They didn't talk about it at the time, with her lips at his steady throat, but he explained it afterwards in that stilted way of his. How it felt like nothing on purpose—how he'd taught himself to go without it, but his body remembered the things people are supposed to do.)

That's probably why they swore to never talk about it again. She figures she'll break the general promise one day, when it's convenient, but she'll cut out her own tongue before she tells anyone about the crying.

Being Renfri-and-Geralt pre-dates the Spring Break That Must Not Be Named, but Spring Break is when she looked at him and  _ knew. _

Then they turned twenty-one and became Renfri-and-Geralt-and-Triss when Triss quit Club Cintra with them to work at Rivia instead, and now Geralt's met Yennefer.

The thing about Geralt is that he's never really held down a relationship, which is partly thanks to his personality—mysterious and endearing for three to six weeks, until whoever it is realizes that he's  _ like that  _ all the way through and won't bloom for them like an angsty little flower—and partly because he's lived with Renfri since they were nineteen and his only friends are her, Triss, and a horse he bought with six hundred bucks and agreement to a no-return policy.

Lots of people are intimidated by that, but Yennefer is too busy having amazing tits and applying to graduate school to care. 

~*~

Renfri fucks her first, which is a fact she'll lord over Geralt forever.

They're lounging on the couch, watching  _ The Walking Dead  _ on the TV by themselves because Geralt had suddenly gotten up and announced he was going to the barn, when Renfri shotguns her second beer.

"You can't even enjoy it that way," Yennefer observes, and doesn't flinch when Renfri belches.

"Great trick at parties, though," Renfri tells her, grinning cheekily. "Gets me all the chicks."

Yennefer leans back against the couch. "Does it?"

"Are you gonna fuck my roommate?" Renfri asks.

Yennefer stretches luxuriously, her neck cracking with a definitive pop, and lolls her head to the side to look at her. "Is he any good at it?"

"Couldn't tell ya," says Renfri.

"He's a bit of a dick, isn't he?" Yennefer asks.

"Mine's bigger." Renfri tongues at the inside of her cheek. "Hey, you know what'd be fucking hilarious?"

Yennefer reaches over and pauses the TV without looking. "What?"

Renfri flashes her teeth. "If I fucked you first." 

"Are  _ you  _ any good at it?" Yennefer asks, laughter coloring her voice, which definitely isn't a  _ no. _

"I haven't conducted a formal survey," Renfri says, "but your feedback is appreciated."

Yennefer raises an eyebrow and allows, "We'll see."

She unpauses the television. Both her forearms have thick, vertical scars on them of a pretty unmistakable and fascinating variety.

"Did they get the blood outta your clothes or just throw them away?" Renfri asks.

Yennefer turns to her with premeditated confusion. "What?"

"I just think about the mess a lot," says Renfri. "I'd want someone to have to clean up after me, too. Fair's fair, ya know?"

"You were right," Yennefer tells her, facing forward again. "You  _ are  _ more of a dick than Geralt."

Renfri shrugs; she's the same all the way down, too, but she's got a cunt and no patience for letting people think she'll turn pretty.

Yennefer'll either handle it or she won't.

"Was it both at once?" Renfri asks. "Or two separate times."

"At once," Yennefer says evenly.

"Takes fuckin' grit." Renfri smiles toothily. "Who fucked it up for you?"

Yennefer glances over. "One of my sisters."

"You ever think about covering them up?" Renfri asks, leaning in a little. "Like with tatts or something?"

"No," says Yennefer.

Renfri rests her elbow on the back of the couch. "How come?"

"If I did, how would pretty girls ask me invasive questions while we watch TV?" Yennefer asks archly.

Renfri grins wickedly. "You think I'm pretty?"

Yennefer leans in suddenly, her eyes bright and awful and hungry, and says, "It's because when I'm the president of this entire goddamn university, I'm going to remember exactly where I came from, and never be her again."

Renfri sinks her teeth into Yennefer's bottom lip before they kiss.

They fall back against the couch, Renfri slipping lower and lower with each piece of clothing that Yennefer rips off of her until she's flat on her back. Yennefer seems like she likes being on top; that's fine for Renfri, when it's a woman.

Yennefer cups one of Renfri's tits in her hand and squeezes, trailing her other hand down the soft pouch of Renfri's stomach. Her fingernails are long enough to catch in Renfri's pubic hair on the way—she pauses, carding her fingers through it for a moment, like she's curious.

"Problem?" Renfri asks, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

Yennefer's eyes drop down to the thick hair on Renfri's legs. Her own calves are tucked up under her dress, but Renfri's felt them and knows.

"You must save a fortune on razors," Yennefer drawls, and rubs a finger against the folds of Renfri's cunt, teasing gently without slipping inside.

Renfri smirks, tilting her chin up to kiss her again. "I'll buy you a drink."

"Mm," Yennefer murmurs. Her finger is fucking torturous, shifting between brushing small circles against Renfri's clit and back down, nudging at the pooling wetness there. She sucks and nibbles at Renfri's bottom lip, not quite kissing her.

Renfri wriggles against the contact, slipping a hand into Yennefer's hair. "Thought I was gonna show you mine's bigger?"

"I take a while to warm up." Yennefer shifts to mouth at Renfri's ear. "Seems like you don't."

"Don't flatter yourself, baby," Renfri tells her, her laugh turning into a soft gasp when Yennefer fucking  _ finally  _ slips her finger inside. "I've been— _ ah— _ fucking horny as balls all day."

"Charming." Yennefer presses her thumb gently against Renfri's clit.

Renfri tightens her grip in Yennefer's hair. "Got your panties off, didn't it?"

"It's better if you don't talk," says Yennefer, no bite to it, and slips her tongue back into Renfri's mouth.

Renfri chuckles into the kiss, tilting her hips up to meet the way Yennefer's finger is rocking inside of her. Winces, once, at a pinch when Yennefer slips a second one in.

"Can I?" Renfri asks, trailing her hand up Yennefer's ribcage towards her breasts.

Yennefer hums, pushing up a little to give her room.

Renfri tucks her hand under Yennefer's dress, above the bra, and squeezes gently. Fuck, she  _ really  _ has amazing tits. Just, the right size to barely spill out of Renfri's hand, and—Renfri slips under the bra, too—soft nipples, perking up with the stroke of her thumb.

"They're not very sensitive," Yennefer mutters. Her breath is starting to quicken, though. "You can be a little more—oh, that's  _ good." _

Renfri rolls the blunt edge of her nail again, biting her own lip. "See, told ya I—oh,  _ ow." _

Yennefer pulls away to frown at her face. "What?"

"You nicked me again," Renfri says, scrunching up her face. "Your manicure's not pussy-grade, sweetheart."

Yennefer snorts and rolls her eyes, pulling both fingers out abruptly.  _ "Sorry,  _ princess."

She doesn't sound even a little fucking sorry, but she does slink down Renfri's body and bury her face between her thighs instead, so—

"Ah,  _ fuck!" _

—Renfri's not gonna whine about it.

~*~

Geralt finds them watching TV on the couch when he gets home. 

Yennefer's eyeliner is smeared on her face and her lips are the exact same half-bruised, half-lipstick color as Renfri's, and the curve of Renfri's mouth is incredibly smug.

"Sorry," he says, face perfectly blank. "Roach wouldn't come in for feeding."

Yennefer lolls her head back on the couch. "We kept ourselves entertained."

"Hm," says Geralt, and goes to take a shower.

~*~

"It wasn't a competition," he tells Renfri that night.

Renfri slurps up her mouthful of ramen and says, "Spoken like a true loser, G."

~*~

Geralt and Yen do fuck eventually, though. Renfri knows because she can hear it through the bedroom wall.

It's enthusiastic, delightfully rough, and a bit on the short side in Renfri's humble opinion. One of the drawbacks of fucking someone who can only shoot their load once, if you ask her, but then again, G's the kind of guy who would bury his face between Yennefer's thighs until he passed out if she asked him nicely—

(Or not so nicely, probably. Renfri's pretty sure that's a thing for him.)

—so maybe Yen's satisfied as it is.

The weirdest part is how quiet it is afterwards. Renfri has to roll over and put music on through her phone before she can fall asleep.

~*~

Renfri uses her pocket knife to slice open a beer can and shotguns it. She's sprawled on the couch, tits out, watching Yennefer reapply her lipstick without looking. They've got somewhere to be in half an hour, which means Geralt'll be home in ten and insist they're already late.

"Do you always drink this much," Yennefer asks mildly, "or are you trying to impress me?"

Renfri burps, tosses the empty can in the direction of the trash, and reaches for another beer. "Yeah."

Yennefer's lips twitch. She tucks the lipstick tube back into her clutch and asks, "What're you studying, anyway? You never mentioned."

"I'm not," Renfri answers.

"Oh?" Yen looks over. "I thought you and Geralt were the same age?"

"We are," Renfri says. "I dropped out."

It's the first time Yen makes a face that looks like judgement. Renfri realizes she never opened her beer.

"Why?" Yennefer asks.

Renfri pops the tab open and drinks it normally. She asks, "Short or long version?"

Yennefer checks her phone, maybe for the time. "The long version."

Renfri grabs her discarded shirt off the floor. She thinks about putting it back on, drops it to the couch, picks it back up again and pulls it over her head after all.

"My mom died when I was six," she says, and holds the pocket knife between two fingers. "And I guess G was the first person who really  _ saw  _ me, you know? And he wanted to come here and I figured it was better than offing my step-mom and her shit-eating, disgusting rapist brother, but it turns out I'm shit at school so now I'm just here."

She takes a drink, glances sideways to find Yen just staring, and adds, "That's it."

(She'll always live with the fact that she would've gone through with it, and the certainty that she wouldn't have regretted it, even a little.)

"That's shit," Yennefer observes, which is fair. "What would the short version have been?"

(Geralt would've, though, and sometimes that feels like the same thing.)

"That it was for Geralt," says Renfri.

Yennefer rests her chin in one hand. "So what'll you do, just bartend forever?"

"Eh, maybe. Maybe I'll do trade school, become a plumber or something." Renfri smiles salaciously. "Lay a bunch of pipe."

Yen snorts, though the rest of her face stays serious. "But what do you  _ want  _ from life?"

Renfri blinks. She doesn't understand the question. She says, "To survive it."

Yennefer plucks the pocket knife out of Renfri's hand, turning it between her fingers. She's looking at it like she'll always half-want somewhere soft to sink it into, some vein to rip open, and Renfri thinks,  _ Mine, mine. Put it in mine,  _ and the knife crunches definitively into a metal can that Yennefer brings to her mouth.

She gulps down the whole thing. Her lipstick is a little smudged afterwards, and she sets the empty can on the coffee table Geralt bought from IKEA and lost the instructions to and watched Renfri assemble anyway with a little frown on his face.

"To surviving," Yen says.

Renfri leans over and wipes at the lipstick stain with her thumb.

"To surviving," she agrees.

~*~

"What do  _ you  _ want?" Renfri asks later, when they're dancing in a crowd of people and she's pressed against Yennefer's front, hands covering Geralt's on Yen's hips.

Yennefer has one hand reaching back to cup Geralt's neck, holding his mouth against her jaw. She uses the other to fist her fingers in Renfri's hair and tug her closer—a little rougher than she probably meant to, but not so rough that Renfri doesn't like it.

Her breath is hot and damp when she shouts,  _ "Everything." _

~*~

Renfri is combing silver dye through Geralt's hair with her bare fingers. The kit came with gloves, but she hates how slimy the thin plastic feels and she doesn't care about the stains, anyway. She doesn't need her hands to have been pretty—just useful.

"Geralt," she says absently, to which he hums in acknowledgement. "If someone wrote a story about us, who d'you think it'd be about?"

"You just said 'about us,'" he points out.

He's sitting in their tub between her legs, shirtless with a towel protecting his neck, while Renfri perches on the side. She tugs a knot out of his hair and he doesn't flinch.

"Yeah," she allows, "but there's always someone it's  _ really  _ about, even if it's an ensemble deal. You know, like—who gets billed first in the credits."

"Sometimes they alternate it," he says.

Renfri yanks the next knot out with pointed force.

Geralt follows the pull of her hands, leaning against the wall of the tub. "I don't know."

"Well, would you want it to be you?" she asks, gathering another glob of dye and massaging it in near his roots.

Geralt hums contentedly. "No."

"Me neither," she says. "It'd probably be about you anyway."

"Because I have a dick?" Geralt guesses drily.

Renfri pats his shoulder through the towel and confirms, "'Cause you have a dick, sunshine."

"Hm." Geralt slouches down a little, his eyes slipping shut. Renfri's done with the hair dye, but she keeps massaging at his scalp anyway. "Yen's staying here for grad school."

"Guess we're not moving when you graduate, then," she says.

Geralt's mouth twitches. "Nowhere else to be."

Renfri lifts the corner of the towel and wipes at a bit of hair dye on the shell of his ear. "Do you want me to stop fucking her?"

"I don't care," he says, like she knew he would. Then, "Do you want me to?" just as predictably.

"Nah," Renfri answers, then pulls his hair up and twists it into a bun, out of the way. "Better give the lady what she wants."

"Hmm." Geralt's fingers brush against her calf before wrapping loosely around her ankle. "Guess so."

~*~

Triss is sort of an outlier in their friend group, in that she had a childhood that most people would describe as fairly normal and Renfri would call unfathomably nonviolent, and so she can say shit like,  _ 'Please don't do that,'  _ and,  _ 'I feel sad right now,'  _ and,  _ 'I love you,'  _ without anything hemorrhaging in her throat.

Also, she's not fucking any of them.

It's honestly a miracle that she tolerates all of their bullshit, but Renfri basically thinks of it as Triss being the kind of person who would adopt a bunch of cats and build, like, a fucking cat palace for them and not get mad when they scratched her—because they're cats, obviously, it's just how they are—and very politely throw anyone out who complained about the claws because the cats were there first.

She's just, like, aggressively kind. Renfri used to kind of plunge a hand into her chest and dig around in there to try and figure out what it was covering up, but she never managed it.

That's probably why Triss fits, actually. There's nothing to find.

Renfri can't cope with people who aren't what they say on the tin. It's exhausting and she's too good at peeling back layers of skin, which people who have them don't tend to like.

So, if literally anyone besides Triss had leaned across the little wrought iron table with her hands wrapped around a caramel apple matcha latte and said, "I'm worried that this thing you have with Yennefer isn't sustainable," Renfri probably would've bit first and raised her hackles later.

But it's Triss, who's too kind to be anything but honest, so Renfri splits her blueberry muffin clean down the middle and asks, "Why?"

"It's just… so  _ vague,"  _ Triss answers. "You never talk about it, and you're weirdly good friends for it to be sex with no strings—so there's probably  _ some  _ strings, wouldn't you think, except neither of you know what they are."

Renfri scowls at her muffin. "And Geralt's thing with her isn't just as bad?"

"Oh, no, don't get me wrong," Triss assures her. "That's also a trainwreck. But I'm not having coffee with Geralt."

Renfri shoves half the muffin in her mouth and deflects, "You're having tea."

Triss somehow manages to smile while still looking unamused. 

Renfri sighs, swallows, and washes it down with a drink. Her nails are getting a little long; she needs to cut them before Yen comes over tonight.

"It'll be fine," she assures her. "It works. No use beating it to death."

"What works?" Triss asks with a perfectly arched eyebrow. "Describe it to me."

"The whatever of it all." Renfri eats the other half of the muffin—maybe a little aggressively. "Fucking hell, T, it's 2018 and you still gotta  _ label  _ everything?"

Triss purses her lips in barely-invoked patience. "Just think about it, okay? You're my friends and I'd hate to see either of you get hurt."

"Duly noted, O Wise One," Renfri says solemnly.

"And by that you mean…" Triss makes a prompting gesture with her mug.

"Not gonna do shit about it," Renfri tells her with grating cheer.

Triss massages at her temples.

~*~

"Do you ever think about, like, the other selves we could've become?" Renfri asks.

"I'm sorry." Yen looks up from between Renfri's thighs, wiping pussy juice from the amused curve of her mouth with the back of a wrist. "Am I  _ boring  _ you?"

Renfri pushes up onto her forearms. "Nah, no, you're great, babe. Just… random brain shit."

Yennefer sighs, readjusting so she can sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed. It's not actually relevant, but her tits look fucking  _ amazing  _ right now.

"'Other selves?'" she prompts, arching an eyebrow.

"You know, like." Renfri shrugs. "There's an alternate universe where none of the trauma and shit happened and you had parents who weren't horrible bastards and no one ever took anything from you. What would you be there?"

Yennefer frowns and asks, "Who would you be?" because no one answers a fucking question around here.

Renfri tilts her head. "I dunno. Maybe a scientist or an actress or something. Maybe someone who helps people."

Someone who wants to.

Yennefer's face is so sad; it makes Renfri feel sick. She always thinks she wants pity until she's got it.

"You can be those things now," Yen tells her softly.

(There's a faint memory—of being impossibly small and breakable and laughing with a little voice like a windchime, waving a glittery wand in the air and dancing around in a powder-pink tutu, and her mother is smiling. No one's ever touched her. They never will, if she doesn't blink.)

"It's too far down," Renfri rasps. "There's nothing to dig up."

Yennefer crawls forward, smiling bittersweetly, and brushes a lock of hair away from Renfri's face. "I don't believe that."

Renfri closes her eyes, kisses her. It's unbearable. She wasn't made for this. Would she have been capable, before they pried it out of her? 

"Maybe we'd be together for real," she whispers. "In that other place."

Yen leans away. "What do you mean?"

Maybe she was born with the lack. It feels like it, sometimes, like the little girl in the princess dress had sharp teeth.

"Just something Triss said, about how we've only got some strings attached," Renfri says, and, oh. She's capable of this. "Do you think we'd have all of them, if we were normal?"

"Are you saying…" Yennefer blinks, repeatedly. Then scoffs, which is a sound she normally reserves for mediocre men. "Are you saying we're too  _ traumatized  _ to be in a relationship?"

Renfri shrugs pragmatically. "I mean, we were dealt a pretty shit hand, collectively—gotta play what you've been dealt."

"Maybe you do," Yennefer says icily. She reaches for her top, which is on the other pillow. "But I'm drawing a new one. I'm not going to wallow in my shitty childhood as an excuse to have a shitty, loveless—"

"That's not what I  _ said,"  _ Renfri snaps. "I'm not—you think I'm  _ choosing  _ this? I'm just being honest about who they fucking made me! You wanna play pretend, that's fine, Yen. Pretend you don't feel ruined by it."

Yennefer barks out a laugh, slightly muffled by the shirt."Wow.  _ Wow.  _ You two really are exactly alike! You're the only people who deserve each other on this goddamn Earth."

She's out of bed by that point, hopping aggressively into her pants. There's a specific kind of satisfaction in watching it happen—like when entire cities get leveled in superhero movies. A scale of casualty that can't affect her.

"There was something worth it in this," Yen tells her, hand on the door. "They were good strings."

Renfri says the kindest thing she can think of, which is nothing.

The bedroom door slams, and then the front door too. Renfri crawls out of bed and dresses in the first things she finds, then walks out into the tiny living room.

Geralt's on the couch reading a book.

The thought of anyone touching her makes her want to vomit, but the alternative is her rotten soul bouncing around the room while her body dissolves into something more useful than itself, so she climbs over the back of the couch and worms her way underneath Geralt's arm.

He hums and turns a page.

Renfri sobs once, dry and feral, and tucks her face into the curve of his throat until the nausea passes. His hair smells a little musty. 

"When'd you break up with Yen?" she asks.

Geralt puts the book down. "Monday."

"Could've warned me," she mutters. One of her arms snakes around his middle.

Geralt rests a hand high on her hip. "Didn't come up."

"This is why you need Instagram or something," Renfri says. 

"No."

"Worth a shot."

Renfri taps her fingers against his side, then digs them into the muscle a little. His chin knocks into the top of her head as his ribs twitch.

She smiles precisely. It feels as natural as anything else. "D'ya think Triss'll feel bad enough to take over DJ'ing karaoke for me?"

"Probably," he allows. "It's a little mean."

Renfri turns her head to rest a cheek against his collarbone; his shirt is damp. "Too mean?"

"Hm," says Geralt.

~*~

"Hey everyone, I'm Triss, and welcome to Wednesday night karaoke! Sign ups open in fifteen minutes, so make sure you get ready!"

~*~

Three and a half months later, Renfri comes home from closing at the bar and unlocks the door with her eyes practically shut. She's exhausted and starving, and Geralt's fucking Yennefer on the couch.

Most of their clothes are still on, but Yen's panties are draped over the back of the couch, which she's got Geralt pinned to. They look over at her when she walks in and kicks off her shoes; one of Yen's tits is spilling out of her dress.

"Whatever," Renfri says, and beelines for the kitchen to make a sandwich.

~*~

Yennefer finds her afterwards—she's sitting up in bed playing on her Switch, so it's not like it was hard to do.

"If you just came back for him," Renfri says, not looking up, "that's chill."

Yennefer crawls onto the bed and digs her bony chin into Renfri's shoulder.

Renfri pauses her game.

"It occurred to me," Yen says slowly, "that I may have… willfully misunderstood what you were trying to tell me."

"S'okay." Renfri chews on the inside of her cheek. "I may've… willfully made myself misunderstandable."

Yen huffs out a laugh. She trails her fingers along the flat of Renfri's arm; her nails are painted the color of a bruised lip and they're the same length as they always are—very pretty and a little too long.

Renfri likes selfish people; they make sense to her. She likes them like fire gorges on charcoal, so it's good Geralt's the one she met at fifteen. 

Tempering, ironically, is good for self-preservation.

"We'll be exactly what we are," Yen decides in the silence. She's made to be a leader of something; no one else uses a fucking silence like that. "Nothing more. We don't need to be."

Renfri kisses the top of her head and unpauses her game, and everything is fine forever.

~*~

Or, it would've been, if it wasn't for that meddling twink.

("Oh, that's a little unfair," Triss will say one day. But the story starts before then.)

~*~

It  _ does  _ start when some undergrad who's almost  _ definitely  _ using a fake ID wanders into Rivia and Geralt goes from resting bitch face to active bitch face when that undergrad sits down at his half of the bar.

There's this specific muscle that jumps in Geralt's jaw when he's dealing with someone annoying at work. It's fucking brilliant.

Renfri does her job half-heartedly while she spies on Geralt, slowly creeping her way closer just in time to hear this poor sucker ask, "Actually, how old  _ are  _ you? It's sort of hard to tell, with the hair."

"Ooh, this'll be good," Renfri jeers, hip-checking Geralt and propping an elbow up on his shoulder. The undergrad's eyes go wide when he sees her. "How old do you think he is, Baby-Face?"

"Hello!" the undergrad says cheerfully. "You look very scary and  _ very  _ hot."

Renfri threatens mildly, "I'd eat you for breakfast."

The undergrad says, "Yeah," like it's going into his spank bank rotation, which is whatever as long as he stays on his side of the fucking bar. He turns back to Geralt, eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and guesses, "Hmm. Thirty… five?"

Renfri bursts out laughing. It's possible she pulls something. 

Geralt is scowling. 

"Renfri," he tells her, "eat him now."

"Told ya, it's the hair." She pats him on the arm and turns to the nearest customer.

By the time she's poured a few beers, Geralt is  _ still  _ arguing with this kid. It's actually kind of comical—this undergrad with round eyes and rounder cheeks is gonna  _ brat  _ his way into getting himself a drink.

Renfri decides to be merciful on Geralt's behalf and put a cork in it.

"Oh, lighten up, Geralt," she tells him, taking his spot in front of the undergrad. "What'll you have, Baby-Face?"

The undergrad's face lights up. He tells her, "My name's Jaskier."

"I'm gonna keep calling you Baby-Face," she says.

"Yes, ma'am." Jaskier grins with unnerving enthusiasm. "I'll have a well shot of whiskey and a PBR, please."

Oh yeah, definitely an undergrad. And, Renfri reflects while she pours his shot, just as likely to be drooling over Geralt as he is her—he's dressed like he's on a pamphlet for Future Gay Uncles' Anonymous, for one thing, and he's also still looking at her like her most attractive feature is her ability to step on him.

(Her best feature is her hair. Her  _ second  _ best feature is her ability to step on him.)

Triss announces that karaoke sign-ups are open, which still makes Renfri smirk every time.

Jaskier drinks his shot like a wuss, which Geralt is probably finding obnoxiously adorable. He grabs his beer, delicate fingers splayed out over the glass, and bats his fucking eyelashes. "Will you guys cheer for me when I sing? I've never sung in front of people before and I'm actually  _ really  _ nervous."

Renfri raises her eyebrows skeptically.

Geralt bares his teeth in what looks like it was  _ supposed  _ to be a smile and says, "Break a leg."

Jaskier brightly says, "That's terrifying, thank you!" and vanishes into the crowd with his beer.

Renfri  _ totally  _ catches Geralt checking out that ass while he saunters away. She'd say something about it, but probably nothing'll come of it.

~*~

Then Baby-Face hops up onto the stage half an hour later and bowls over the whole bar with a rendition of "Some Nights" that almost makes Renfri feel an  _ emotion.  _

Geralt's watching with his  _ I've Got a Half-Chub in Public  _ face, which Renfri unfortunately and intimately learned about that time they all went to the beach over summer break and Yennefer teacher-voiced the poolside bartender into remaking her drink the way she wanted it.

"Damn," Renfri says admiringly, "you're totally gonna fuck him, aren't you?"

Geralt practically snarls when he grabs the rag she's holding right of her hands, so, yeah.

The motherfucker's gonna bang that twinky bastard.

~*~

“Maybe he won’t come back,” says Geralt.

~*~

"Hello, good people of Rivia," Jaskier tells the bar, tapping his fingers against the side of his microphone. "This song is for Geralt, my muse and my biggest fan. Make sure you slip a little extra in his tip jar, friends—I just know he's been  _ dying  _ to buy me flowers."

Geralt looks like he might actually combust.

"Sincerely, G," Renfri says gleefully, playing with his hair. "I can't begin to tell you how much you deserve this."

He scowls and knocks her hand away, but he watches the whole song. Sucker.

~*~

Yen's face is buried between two pillows on Renfri's bed. She mutters, "Talk to me about something that isn't my horrible students."

"Hmm." Renfri traces a hand down Yennefer's back over her shirt, avoiding the twist in her spine. "G's got a perpetual boner for this new karaoke regular, but he's being a dumbass meathead about it."

"Oh?" Yen lifts her head marginally. "Do tell."

"It's honestly, like, fucking hilarious," Renfri says. "I mean, this kid's probably sneaking in with a fake ID, but he's a total brat and got an  _ orgasmic  _ set of pipes, so, like—"

"One hit KO," Yen says sagely. She rolls over and suggests, "Maybe we shouldn't call him a kid if Geralt's going to fuck him? Is it… a  _ weird  _ age difference, or?"

Renfri hums. "That's the other thing—his target demo's actually, like, scary MILFs and/or their husbands. Dude almost gets decked on the reg, except—"

"Geralt helps him?" Yen guesses.

"Bin-go," Renfri answers, popping the second syllable. 

Yen chuckles wryly. "That's our boy."

"He dedicates  _ songs  _ to him, Yen," Renfri says, gesturing emphatically. "He's so thirsty it's fucking insane. But G won't see it, obviously."

"Do you think he's got a real crush?" Yen asks softly. She reaches up and tucks Renfri's hair behind her ear. "Because we know how that ends."

"Yeah," Renfri says. Yennefer's fingers linger at her jawline and her mouth suddenly feels dry. "We do."

~*~

Jaskier comes in on a Tuesday night and looks comically confused when he notices Renfri and Triss sharing the bar. He sits down in the middle between them.

"Hey, Baby-Face," Renfri says, reaching for a glass. "The usual?"

"Oh, um, I guess." Jaskier tilts his head at her. "Where's Geralt?"

"He died," Renfri says somberly.

Jaskier looks so horrified that it almost isn't even  _ fun,  _ Jesus Christ.

"Holy shit, dumbass, it's a fucking joke!" she insists, barking out a laugh. "I know he seems like a robot they built to work here and scare off—well, the likes of you—but he  _ does  _ have days off, you know?"

The kid recovers gracefully, at least. He laughs and says, "No, I know, I just—nevermind. Um, I'm good on the drink, though, thanks."

"Sure," she says skeptically, flipping the glass back over.

Jaskier looks around awkwardly, then pulls out his phone.

Fuck, this is pathetic. Renfri keeps thinking about what Yen said.

She leans on the countertop and says, "Look, Baby-Face, you're not literally the worst, so I'm gonna give you some tough like, okay?"

He looks up at her with furrowed eyebrows. "I think the expression's 'tough love.'"

"I don't love you," she says. "You want my advice or you wanna fuck off if you're not drinking?"

"Advice, please," he answers, steepling his fingers. "Thank you."

"Geralt's not gonna change for you," Renfri says bluntly. "Give it up."

Jaskier's frown deepens. He looks at her with something so earnest in his eyes that it makes her lip curl reflectively.

"Why would I want him to?" he asks.

Renfri blinks. "Because… he's a fucking grouchy bastard?"

"Yeah." Jaskier tilts his head. "Do  _ you  _ want him to change?"

"Of course not," Renfri snaps. She gestures pointedly at her unamused face. "But I'm also, you know—"

"A grouchy fucking bastard?" Jaskier suggests cheerfully.

Renfri smiles without joy. "Who could rip your balls off and sleep like a fucking baby."

"I really cannot emphasize enough how much I believe you," says Jaskier, just as cheerfully. "I'll be off, then—you're on my way home!"

Renfri closes her eyes and mutters, "Of course we are."

Triss appears next to her, poking her in the cheek with a teasing finger. "Did you just try and do something nice for someone else?"

"Yeah," Renfri says, watching the door close on that stupid college kid ass. "Look what good it fucking did."

~*~

One Saturday in March, Jaskier shows up at Rivia covered in glitter, surrounded by a group of chittering undergrad girls  _ also  _ shedding glitter all over the fucking floor. They're all as pretty as Jaskier is, with nice clothes their mothers probably bought them and cute little earrings. 

They stay for the amount of time it takes for them to oggle Geralt while his back is turned making a drink, then abandon Jaskier in a flurry of laughter and hugs goodbye.

It's like something out of a fucking movie. Renfri hasn't had that many friends in her fucking  _ lifetime.  _ She swallows down her jealousy and pours a shot of whiskey as a private peace offering.

"You don't wanna be Snapchat friends with me?" Jaskier is asking, levelling Geralt with a pout.

Renfri says, "Don't take it personally, Baby-Face," and tries to slide the shot over—Geralt intercepts it, so whatever. "G doesn't do social media."

Jaskier actually seems, like, sloppy fucking wasted, so the stolen whiskey makes sense. He gapes at Geralt and asks, "What, at  _ all?  _ How are you a real person?"

Geralt, in typical fashion, tries to dodge the question by doing his job—he turns to close a tab out for some guy.

Renfri gestures for Jaskier to lean in closer.

"I told you," she says, as fake-privately as possible over the din of the bar, "grouchy fucking bastard."

Geralt reappears at her side, raising a skeptical eyebrow at their conspiratorial posture.

Jaskier whines, "But Snapchat is so  _ fun,  _ Geralt! If you had one I could send you pictures of all the funny stuff I overhear on campus and my outfits every day and parts of songs I'm writing!  _ Ooh,  _ and my roommate's dog and—"

"Jesus Christ,  _ okay,"  _ Geralt snaps, putting a hand to his face. "I'll make one. Show me how to use it."

It's Renfri's turn for her jaw to drop.

"Wait,  _ really?"  _ asks Jaskier.

"Yeah," Renfri repeats incredulously. She looks around like they might secretly be in a fucking hostage situation.  _ "Really?" _

Jaskier claps his hands together like a fucking child and says, "Oh, this'll be so fun! Download it right now!"

And Geralt pulls out his fucking  _ phone. _

There's literally like. Renfri's in whole-ass shock. She can't even count how many  _ fucking times  _ she's tried to convince Geralt to—

"This is a prank, right?" she asks thinly. "You're playing a fucking prank."

Geralt flicks his eyes over to her, seeming as confused as she is and somehow also completely fucking serious.

Renfri pulls a Geralt and goes back to work instead of dealing with her emotions. She keeps looking over, though, waiting for the moment he breaks it to Jaskier that he was fucking with him, of course he's not getting Snapchat, he barely  _ texts. _

But Jaskier just chatters excitedly while Geralt works, drinking his ridiculous pink Cosmo, until the app's apparently finished downloading and Geralt and Jaskier hunch over the phone together.

It's… weird. Renfri's not, like, pissed at Geralt or anything. She sees plenty of him; it's not like  _ she  _ needs to talk to him online. And what the fuck would he even post on Instagram or Snapchat that she didn't already know was going on? 

But baby-faced undergrads with an endless supply of floral print collared shirts and brightly colored pants aren't supposed to be able to waltz into this fucking bar and  _ change  _ things. Geralt needs to fuck the guy already and get it out of his system, that's all.

It'll pass. And it's Renfri's god-given right as Geralt's best friend to drag the absolute motherfucking shit out of him until it does.

Retribution is almost immediate, since Renfri gets to watch as Geralt shouts, "Hey, pay your fucking tab!" at Jaskier from across the bar, who appears to be bolting for the door.

Jaskier exits with a shameless flourish, calling out, "Bye, honey, love you!" as Geralt hides his face in his hands.

Renfri sidles up next to him at the bar and peers at his phone, where he's frowning at the "Add Friends" screen.

"Karma's a beautiful bitch," she tells him cheerfully. "Here, I'll help you,  _ honey.  _ Do you wanna sync your contacts?"

Geralt's frown deepens. "Will it tell everyone I have this stupid app?"

_ Jesus Christ, dumbass,  _ Renfri thinks.  _ Make it  _ more  _ obvious you just want that D. _

"Uh,  _ yeah,"  _ she says out loud. "That's kinda the point."

"Hm," Geralt says with obvious disapproval, and closes the window.

Renfri makes a point of rolling her eyes as she retreats to her side of the bar, then pulls her own phone out of her pocket once Geralt's not looking.

"Hey, sunshine," she teases, "look over here!"

Geralt looks over with mild confusion that quickly warps into a scowl when he notices her phone; she snaps a picture in that exact moment, which honestly might be her crowning achievement in life if she dies before thirty.

"That's a winner," Renfri informs him. "Welcome to the modern era, G."

Geralt grumbles something sub-English under his breath and goes back to work.

~*~

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ can u believe this dumbass finally got a Snapchat bc a cute boy asked him nicely _

**_tmarigold:_ ** _ OMG as in Jaskier?? _

**_yenven333:_ ** _ Lol good one _

**_yenven333:_ ** _ Holy shit just got the friend request wtf is happening _

**_tmarigold:_ ** _ Our baby's growing up :') _

"It wasn't even that nicely," Geralt mutters petulantly, then snaps his head up. "Wait, who did you send that to?"

~*~

**_whitewolf95:_ ** _ [A picture of one of Geralt's windowsill plants with a tiny flowerbud emerging] _

~*~

**_whitewolf95:_ ** _ [Half of Yennefer's face from behind a giant slice of pizza] _

~*~

**_whitewolf95:_ ** _ (chat) Does snapchat tell someone when you take a screenshot _

~*~

Renfri's in a nightmare.

She's out of the nightmare, in her room, or maybe still in one of those nightmares where you keep falling through layers in the floor and you think you're awake but you're still asleep because this feels less real than the hand around her throat and her fingers are touching the screen on her phone through a sheet of panic.

It's panic or maybe this is the time it kills her.

She's gonna die before Geralt picks up the phone. She's gonna die before he sits down on her bed. He holds up all the fingers on one hand and says, "Five."

Renfri's eyes dart around the room. "You—the ceiling fan—door—my hands—the blanket."

"Good," he says. "Four."

Her hands are stained silver again, like she dipped them in mercury. She uses them to reach out and touch.

"My shirt—your hair—my hair—blanket."

"Three," says Geralt.

"Your voice," she says first, before it disappears. Then scrapes her nails against the sheets. "Scratching. The AC."

Geralt says, "Two."

Renfri closes her eyes and breathes. "My BO." She opens her eyes again, tucks her face into the crook of his arm with a weak little smile.  _ "Your  _ BO."

Geralt huffs out a laugh. "One."

Renfri licks his cheek to make him laugh again; his stubble stings her tongue. She's not dying. She wonders what time it is.

"Again?" he asks.

She shakes her head, tugging the blanket up to her armpits. There's a drench of sweat soaking her shirt and her chest hurts from how hard it was to force the air in. She's not dying.

Geralt asks, "Want me to stay?"

Renfri rasps, "Yeah."

"Okay," he says, then looks down at his bare chest. "Uh, be right back."

She reaches over and turns on her bedside lamp while he's gone, staring at her hands.

Geralt trudges back in with a shirt on and his phone, a charger, and earbuds in his hand. He crawls under the covers and gestures with the little bundle of electronics. "Uh. Would you mind?"

There's a massive headache brewing behind her eyes. She says, "Nah," and burrows under the blankets with her eyes peeking out so she can snoop on him—pretty solid, as far as distractions go.

Geralt plugs his phone into the wall and tucks both earbuds in, then opens up his Snapchat. She can't read his screen from this angle, but she sure as fuck recognizes Jaskier's face when it pops up on video chat.

"Hey," Geralt says. "Sorry."

Renfri raises her eyebrows. Half of Jaskier's screen is taken up by some kind of stuffed animal.

"It's fine now," Geralt tells him, then glances around in confusion when something's said back. "Uh, Renfri's room."

Jaskier's camera does something janky, which makes Geralt wince.

"We're roommates." Geralt turns down the volume on his phone, which makes Renfri snort. "It didn't—" he pauses, apparently cut off. "It didn't come up."

Renfri pinches Geralt between two ribs.  _ Dork.  _ He twitches and resettles; she nestles up beside him, barely not touching, and closes her eyes.

His voice is a low, sleepy rumble. Warm in a way it rarely is while he sinks against the pillows, tucking himself in. There's nothing on her throat. There's nothing.

"Uh, you got your essay back," Geralt says, like he's picking up a discarded conversation. "You said—yeah. I doubt that."

He chuckles. They sound so easy together, like they rehearsed. Renfri's exhaustion was dense before, but she's hollow and throbbing with it now, like there's something that could be poured back in to fix it. 

Like craving red meat the week before she bleeds.

"No," says Geralt, and then, "So read it to me."

Christ. Christ, she's in the nightmare. She wants this to be real for him and the terror's already inside when she swallows.

~*~

Renfri wakes up again—maybe because it's too quiet. Geralt's asleep next to her with his phone on the pillow beside him, still bright with an active call.

She can hear the AC and the sheets rustling when she scoots up in bed to reach the phone. 

Jaskier's frowning at his screen in what looks like concentration, and he doesn't notice when Renfri's dimly lit face appears on camera.

She tugs the headphones out of the audio jack and says, "Hey, Baby-Face," which makes him jump. "Still can't sleep?"

"Oh," he says, gaze settling like he's clicked back over to the call, "um, I probably could." He wets his bottom lip, looking flustered but not ashamed. "But… sometimes he wakes back up, so."

So he waits.

"Christ on a cracker," Renfri says, bewildered. "How has the world not swallowed you whole by now?"

"It keeps spitting instead." Jaskier smirks softly. "Should I drink more pineapple juice?"

Renfri snorts, then feels the sudden pang in her stomach. "Night, Baby-Face."

His smile evens out; he waves at her from around that stupid, massive bear and echoes, "G'night, Ren."

She plugs the headphones back in and leaves the phone where she found it, just in case.

~*~

Renfri's waiting for the right moment to snap a picture of Geralt mooning at Jaskier from across the room when Yen sweeps into Rivia on a Wednesday—never a good sign. Yennefer plus willingness to tolerate karaoke singing means a shit week and nothing else.

They're gonna need booze, stat. Renfri grabs Yen's favorite bottle of Merlot and appears at Geralt's side right as Yen, sure enough, tells him, "None will be spared."

"Who're we killing?" Renfri asks, uncorking the bottle.

Yennefer snatches it and the glass Geralt's holding and fills it right to the brim. "My students."

"I'm in," Renfri says automatically. 

Yennefer groans, leaning over to slurp her wine without lifting her hand. She leaves a lipstick print behind and asks, "Do you think I've gone soft? They used to be afraid of me. Maybe if I started wearing all black again."

Renfri squints at her face. "Hmm, I feel like you used to wear more eyeliner. That could help."

"Worth a shot," Yen agrees. She sighs dramatically. "They've just been  _ awful.  _ There's this one student who—excuse me," she cuts off, waving a hand in front of Geralt's face. "What're  _ you  _ looking at?"

Geralt grunts, still scanning the bar with that broody, secretly-needy face of his. Jaskier's suddenly nowhere in sight.

Renfri grabs Yen's wine glass and takes a long sip, smirking over the rim. "He's looking for that regular I was telling you about—the one he wants to fuck."

Geralt's nose scrunches up. "I don't—"

"Ooh, is he here?" Yen asks excitedly. She takes her wine back and swirls it around in the glass. "Do I get to meet him?"

The answer is yes, and immediately, because Jaskier hops up into the stool right next to her and whines, "Geraaaalt, can—"

Yen's face is, like,  _ cosmically  _ terrible.

"No," she says, gesturing a little like she wants to chop his head off. "No, no, absolutely not, Julian, I was here first—you've got to leave."

Ohh, shit. Oh, shit, whatever this is, it's gonna be amazing.

Jaskier's entire brain does a soft-reboot. Renfri's never seen him  _ terrified  _ before, and Geralt once dragged him away by his stupid collared shirt so two thirds of a biker gang didn't eviscerate him. This is the best day of her life. 

"Hi, Yennefer!" he says with desperate pleasantness. "How's it going? I didn't know you liked karaoke."

"No. Nope." Yennefer curls her lip. "We're not doing this."

Holy shit, did they  _ fuck?  _ Is Geralt destined to watch all his friends fuck his other friends before he does? 

Renfri props her elbows up on the bar and grins eagerly.  _ "What  _ is happening here?"

Yen ignores her, but her voice kicks up another half-octave. "I specifically come to Rivia because my students don't. Because I don't drink with my students. Especially not you."

Okay, slightly more disappointing than the fucking hypothesis, but still pretty great. Of fucking  _ course  _ Baby-Face has been terrorizing Yen all semester. That's literally the most on-brand thing imaginable for him. 

"I thought it was the charming company," Geralt deadpans to Yen, who wheels on him immediately.

_ "You,"  _ she threatens, "don't start."

Jaskier, apparently thrilled he's not the sole target of Yen's wrath anymore, claps his hands together like an excitable child. "Ooh, do you two know each other?"

Yen turns to him indignantly and asks, "Do  _ you?" _

Renfri pounces. "Hey,  _ Yennefer,  _ do you remember that regular I mentioned?"

Yen's face goes blank with shock. Or rage. They look remarkably similar on her.

"No. No, no, you're not serious." She looks around, notices the wine glass in her hand, and takes another drink. "No, shut the fuck up. Geralt, tell me this isn't happening."

"This isn't happening," Geralt says automatically, and fists his hand in Jaskier's shirt. "I  _ knew  _ you lied, you little—"

"Up next is Jaskier," Triss interrupts over the sound system, "singing 'I Want it That Way.' Jaskier!"

The bratty little nuisance twists out of Geralt's grip with a joyful, "Gotta go, honey, bye!" tossed over his shoulder and basically trips onto the stage in a feat of intentional chaos.

Yen hisses, "Geralt."

"Uh," Geralt says sheepishly. "It's not him?"

Jaskier, helpfully, waves to the crowd and says, "Hi, everyone! This song is in honor of me and Geralt's thirty day snap streak. Everyone, please congratulate Geralt on one  _ month _ of being a normal adult man!"

The kid's either got balls of fucking titanium or no self-preservation. Probably the second.

Yen chugs her entire glass of wine like she wants to throw it at someone's face.

"Ger," she says, which means it's  _ his  _ face. "I know we're not exclusive or whatever, but you  _ cannot  _ fuck my least favorite student."

Oh, shit.

Geralt's eyes narrow. "Why?"

Yen snaps, "Because he's  _ terrible.  _ And I  _ know  _ him, and it's just weird!"

"You're fucking Ren!" Geralt shoots back like it's at all comparable.

"Do you  _ hate  _ Renfri?" Yen asks at the exact moment Renfri jams her elbow into Geralt's stupid fucking kidney.

He takes the hint and pivots, "We're focusing on the wrong thing. I don't wanna fuck him."

Yen snorts and turns her head, but, shit—she flutters her eyelashes in a way that only means one thing.

Renfri grabs her hand and tugs her off to the side. "Hey, are you okay? This was supposed to be funny. Do you not think it's funny?"

"I'm going to kill him," Yen answers evenly.

"Uh," Renfri asks, "which one?"

Yen hesitates, wetting her bottom lip, and Renfri realizes in horror that she might actually  _ not  _ be okay with either answer.

"You think this is  _ funny?"  _ Yen asks instead.

"Uh,  _ duh." _ Renfri gestures at Jaskier, who's peacocking around the stage and miming all the words to his stupid boy band song. "G wants to fuck  _ that,  _ whose ideal type is by all accounts  _ you,  _ and you've been having wet dreams about his grisly murder all semester."

Yen stares at her.

"It's fucking  _ cosmic,  _ babe," Renfri adds helpfully.

Yennefer scrubs a hand over her face, which smudges her eyeliner. She looks way scarier that way, which will be a helpful note to give her at a later time.

"Hey," Renfri offers, gentling a little. "Come stay with me tonight. We'll get ice cream and bitch about it."

"Holy shit," Yen says suddenly. "What in God's name is happening to your  _ face?" _

It takes Renfri a second to realize that Yen's talking to Geralt, who's making heart eyes so hard at the ridiculous karaoke performance that he doesn't even  _ notice  _ her.

Jaskier jumps directly into the mic stand and almost knocks it over and Geralt honest to fucking Jesus  _ smiles  _ about it, and—

"Ohh, fuck me with a hairbrush," Renfri realizes. She's so fucking stupid. She digs her fingers into Geralt's jaw and forces him to look at her. "You don't wanna fuck him. You  _ like  _ him."

Geralt tugs out of her grip, blinking like it hadn't occurred to him either. Fucking moron.

"Oh my God," Yen says. "Oh my  _ God.  _ Of all the people— _ what  _ do you see in him?"

Renfri thinks about the steady stream of snapchats, the late night video calls. The way Geralt fucking  _ laughs  _ and asks about Jaskier's day and started wearing his hair in a bun more after Jaskier said it made him look like a sexy hipster, which isn't even a  _ compliment. _

"Nothing," says Geralt. He makes a really obvious play to edge towards a customer and out of the conversation. "I don't."

Yen demands his attention by emphasizing,  _ "Genuinely, _ Geralt, if I didn't personally know your track record I would question your—actually, I'm still questioning your taste. Am I the exception to the rule?"

"Uhh, spring break, freshman year, remember?" Renfri blurts, gesturing at herself. "Baby-Face is  _ definitely  _ the exception."

Geralt stiffens, warning her, "We agreed to forget about that."

"Yeah," Renfri says, smirking, "but now it's convenient for me."

And, genuinely, at this point it would be  _ more  _ shocking to people if they hadn't fucked at least once, Renfri's tenuous grip on the Kinsey scale aside. Like,  _ look  _ at them.

Geralt doubles-down on fleeing to the other side of the bar, which definitely isn't happening. Renfri reaches over and yanks him unceremoniously back by the jacket, and it's his willingness to get manhandled that clues her in.

"Actually," she says, eyeing him wickedly. "I'm getting the thread here. You just like anyone who has the balls to boss you around."

Geralt tugs free, looking sullen about it.

"That's a good point, actually," Yen agrees, then licks her lips and leans across the bar into his space.

"Powerful women," Renfri lists, counting on her fingers. "Bratty twinks…"

"What's this about my people?" Jaskier asks, and Jesus Christ, Geralt's already pouring him a glass of water. He takes it with restless fingers tapping on the glass. "Thank you."

Geralt conveniently elbows Renfri when he puts the pitcher back down, but she's pissed at him for reasons she can't totally describe but is absolutely gonna act on anyway, so she tells Jaskier, "Geralt's type."

Jaskier does an actual spit-take, big eyes going even wider. "Oh?  _ Oh!  _ Erm, as in—?"

Jesus Christ, none of them have any brain cells. Except Yen, maybe, but she's watching with a pinched expression.

"Sorry, sorry, um, I try not to assume, so?" Jaskier laughs thinly. "I wasn't sure."

Renfri knows a thing about doubling down too. She smacks Geralt on the ass and says, "G spends too much money on his hair to be straight."

Jaskier laughs again, just as awkwardly, and says, "That's a fair point."

It's possible that Renfri broke him.

Geralt is frowning worriedly. "Are you okay?"

Before Jaskier can answer, Yen trails her fingers up Geralt's arm in a clearly seductive movement.

"Well, as  _ fun  _ as this was, I'm leaving," she announces, then leans across the bar to bite at Geralt's lower lip. "See you tonight?"

See  _ Geralt  _ tonight. 

Not Renfri, with her pathetic cutesy offer of ice cream and—and fuck if she knows, emotional support or something useless like that. 

And, of course. It makes sense—Yen responding to whatever clusterfucking crisis is happening by reaching out and  _ grabbing  _ everything she can carry so everyone damn well knows what's hers—and the rub is that if she'd done anything else, Renfri wouldn't  _ want  _ her so goddamn much.

So what the fuck is she supposed to say?

Yennefer leaves with Geralt's keys and Renfri goes back to work.

~*~

She can hear them fucking, of course. It doesn't sound like anything that fucking special and she hates how mean it makes her feel, like she's made of something that could ooze under the floorboards.

After, Yen pads into the bathroom across the hall. Renfri listens and half-wonders if she'll come back through the wrong door.

She doesn't, but Renfri's phone lights up with a text.

**_T (2:43 AM):_ ** _ Check Jaskier's snap story. Wtf happened tonight and why do I miss all the best gossip in the DJ booth?? _

Renfri rolls her eyes and opens up the app.

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [An unopened pack of poptarts sitting on a classroom desk] Happy Wednesday let's see how loudly I can open these before my mean TA realizes it's on purpose _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [A blurry, grinning selfie. The picture is geo-tagged at Rivia] Karaoke time!! _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [A half-eaten bowl of froyo that's absolutely drenched in chocolate syrup and gummy bears] It's sad bitch hours [frowning emoji, peace sign emoji] _

To be fair, Renfri has no idea what the fuck happened either. She taps on the picture and sends a direct message.

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ but like you gotta admit it was pretty funny _

Jaskier opens the chat and starts typing. It stays that way for a few minutes, off and on, until the little chat bubble finally disappears.

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ I can acknowledge the objective absurdity of the situation, yes _

Renfri rolls her eyes.

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ You text like a Victorian noblewoman _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ That's inaccurate on several levels _

Renfri snorts.

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ What are you, an English major? _

There's a long pause before the next message.

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ My mother used to drop me off at the library on Saturdays and tell me not to talk to strangers. More for their safety than mine. One time I tried to climb a bookshelf and knocked the whole thing over lol _

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ None of that's related to what I just said _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ I am very sad and out of gummy bears _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ Since my sorrows are at least 30% your fault, can I drink for free now? :) _

Christ, she hates how much she likes this kid.

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ You drink for free but you still gotta tip me _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ Deal <3333333 _

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ Gross bye _

Jaskier types and types, and Renfri falls asleep before he answers. 

When she wakes up an hour and a half later, groggy and desperately needing to piss, all the message says is,  _ Goodnight. _

~*~

Renfri usually wakes up last. The next day's no different, and she finds Geralt and Yennefer both already in the kitchen. Geralt's frying up his traditional after-sex eggs on the stove while Yennefer leans against the counter next to him, watching idly.

She reaches into the freezer when Renfri grumbles, "G'morning."

"Morning," Yen answers, rustling around in there. "We've got Vanilla—very boring, Ger—and Rocky Road."

Geralt just grunts at her. 

Renfri fluffs up her disaster bedhead and asks, "What?"

"Icecream," Yen says. She holds up a tub in each hand, blinking innocently with her makeup-less face and puffy lips. "Since we didn't have it last night."

"Oh," says Renfri. Her arm suddenly feels like she slept on it wrong. "Sure, yeah. Rocky Road, duh."

Yen smiles and tucks the Vanilla back into the freezer, and takes the two spoons that Geralt wordlessly fishes out of a drawer for her. She doesn't bother with bowls, which is fine by Renfri; it's not like they don't all swap spit on the reg. 

She shakes out her hand as she sits down on the couch and takes one of the spoons. Yen curls her legs up underneath herself, knees pressing into Renfri's thighs. 

It gets quiet again. Renfri has to pry the little marshmallows out of the freezer-burned carton. Geralt scrapes the bottom of the frying pan against the burner on the stove when he flips his omelet.

Yen smiles, an unsettling private thing with soft lips and little crinkles around eyes that are too big for her face.

(Geralt likes people with eyes too big for their faces. He likes dark hair and being used a little and people who are better than him at things.) 

Renfri presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth—brain-freeze, suddenly locking up her spine—and forgets to like anything at all.

~*~

**_T (10:17 AM):_ ** _ Mandatory meeting at the coffee shop this afternoon. 3 PM? _

**_G (10:35 AM):_ ** _ Sure. _

**_Yen (10:37 AM):_ ** _ If we're going to talk about last night, buy my presence with a raspberry danish [kissy face emoji] _

**_T (10:38 AM):_ ** _ Deal, babe. _

Renfri looks up from her phone, ditches her ice cream spoon, and asks, "Can you give me a ride?"

"Which one of us are you talking to?" asks Yen.

Renfri grins. "Whoever's gonna give me what I want."

Geralt sighs audibly and jingles his keys.

~*~

"Should I be offended that the barista never gives me a fork anymore?" Renfri asks as the gang sits down at their usual table. She tugs a slice of bacon out of her sandwich and crunches it in half with her teeth.

"Absolutely, yes," Yen tells her, primly cutting into one corner of her danish.

Triss agrees, "You do kind of eat like that little girl's parents in  _ Spirited Away." _

"You take that fucking  _ back,"  _ Renfri says, before shoving an entire croissant into her mouth with indignant fervor. "I'm a motherfucking  _ princess." _

"I'm just saying, and I  _ do  _ say it with love," Yennefer tells her, shrugging. "You and Geralt  _ do  _ behave like you were raised by wolves."

Renfri swallows and says, "Wolves would've been better parents. Right, G?"

Geralt grunts, eyebrows furrowed aggressively at his phone.

"Oh, are you  _ still  _ moping?" Yen complains, waving a hand in front of his screen. "I  _ told  _ you not to make me talk you into this."

"Into what?" Triss asks. "Someone  _ please  _ catch me up on what happened. I bought you your blood pastry—you  _ promised." _

"Jaskier's real name is Julian," Renfri answers, taking pity. "And he's been ruining that class Yen's teaching with, like, his general personality?"

Yen agrees, "Ugh,  _ yes.  _ He really is just the—"

"Ignoring me," Geralt mutters, putting his phone face-down.

"Excuse me?" Yen asks, blinking at him.

Geralt looks up at them, collectively, and repeats, "He's ignoring me."

"Why?" Triss asks.

"Don't know." Geralt frowns down at his soup. "He was weird after Yen left."

Triss is busy demanding, "Well, what did you  _ say?"  _ but Renfri's more focused on the unmistakable smug twitch of Yennefer's lips.

"He asked if we were dating," says Geralt.

"And?" Yen asks, raising her eyebrows.

Geralt takes a spoonful of soup and pours it back into the bowl.

"Oh, for fuck's  _ sake,  _ Geralt." Yen spears her danish with her fork, apparently forgets the part where she cuts a piece off, and gestures with the entire thing flopping in the air. "And you can't think of  _ any  _ reason why he'd be avoiding you?"

He startles, subtly, putting the spoon down with a little  _ clink _ against the bowl. "Because you're his TA?"

"'Because I'm—'" Yennefer pinches the bridge of her nose. "You know what? I'm going to pretend you don't exist for a second, okay? I need a minute. Jesus Christ. I'm going to kill you, Geralt. I'm going to, I swear to God."

While Yen's processing her desire for murder, Renfri helpfully suggests, "Why don't you check his snap story?"

Geralt squints at her. "He didn't send me anything today."

Triss sighs dramatically, patting Yennefer's hand with one of her own. "His  _ story.  _ You know, that little circle that appears next to someone's name sometimes?"

Geralt picks his phone back up warily.

"Bless your fucking heart," says Renfri, and grabs the phone out of his hands. She types in his password and shows him how to get to Jaskier's story.

They click through all the ones from last night, Geralt's frown deepening the whole time, and then reach a new string of videos from today.

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [The phone is propped up somewhere, giving a full view of Jaskier sitting in a desk chair, an acoustic guitar resting against his knee. There are noticeable bags under his eyes and some kind of filter on the video that makes them look mysterious and artistic instead of fucking depressing.] Sad bitch hours are out, fuck you hours are in [kissing face emoji] _

It's a cover of fucking “New Rules” by Dua Lipa. It's unironically really good.

Baby-Face is legit living his best life, huh?

Too bad he's vagueing the only man in existence stupid enough to miss the point. Geralt watches the whole time, the four of them listening over the din of the cafe, and stirs his spoon around in the bowl.

"That clear anything up for you?" Renfri asks when it's over, just in case.

Geralt hums and eats his fucking soup.

~*~

"Hey," Renfri says afterwards, slipping her hand into Yen's back pocket on their walk to their cars. "Can I come over later?"

"Oh—I've got a mountain of essays to grade," Yennefer answers, turning her head with an apologetic smile. "But you could keep me company, if you wanted. It'd be… nice."

Geralt's up ahead of them, walking with Triss. He gets to the car and turns the key in the passenger side door—the only lock that still works from the outside—then leans across the car to flip the driver's side open.

Renfri watches with a sudden itch in her throat. She's got a hangnail that's catching on the seam of Yennefer's pocket and throbbing in time with Yen's wedges tapping against the sidewalk, and, yeah.

It'd be nice.

"Nah," Renfri says. "Just text me when you're free, I guess."

Yen side-steps with a little frown; Renfri's hangnail snags when her hand slips free.

"Fine," says Yennefer, and her car beeps at them from across the road. "Talk to you later."

She jaywalks away from them, barely outpacing a light change with the kind of conviction that makes the row of drivers staring at their green light second-guess themselves into staying stalled out on the road.

Renfri doesn't snap her eyes away until Yennefer clicks her seatbelt into place.

She finds Triss riding shotgun already, apparently having talked herself into a ride home, and climbs into the back seat without whining about it.

"What in the world was that?" Triss asks her.

"Whatever," Renfri says, cracking her neck decisively. "Just fucking drive."

Geralt meets her gaze in the rearview mirror, his voice bone-dry. "And I'm the idiot here?"

Renfri kicks her boots up on the seat next to her in a cheerful fuck you, because she can.

~*~

The truck takes three tries to start.

They don't have nice things.

~*~

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [Geralt is hunched over a bright blue table, staring at a cup of bubble tea like it's the most interesting thing in the fucking world. His hair's pulled up in another stupid bun.] Get you a man who looks at you like G looks at bubble tea. _

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ (chat) I thought we were in fuck you hours _

**_dandilionbard:_ ** _ [A close-up on Geralt's lips wrapped around the oversized straw. His eyes are just barely in frame, but he's clearly glaring at the camera.] I'm weak and stupid. Do I still get free drinks? :) _

~*~

"Would you call me?" Yen asks her that night, or the next morning, whatever, it doesn't matter. Her hair is sticking to her sweaty collarbones in dark wisps that look like cracks in her skin. 

Renfri's halfway back into her jeans. She tugs extra hard on the zipper that always sticks and asks, "Did you lose your phone?"

"If you needed me," Yen says instead. There's a bruise on her throat; Renfri can't remember if it was there when she got here. "Are we the type of people who can call each other?"

Renfri can hear Geralt laughing at night, sometimes, on the phone. She chews on the peeling skin at her cuticles and tastes pussy.

"We're not even the type of people who can need things," she says.

"Yes," Yennefer agrees softly, and turns off the light before Renfri can even find her shirt. "That's what I thought, too."

~*~

Jaskier is gazing at Geralt with his eyes shining in the blurry spotlight, the curve of his mouth stupid and sweet and so fucking punchable, except no one ever does because Geralt's got his cheek propped up on one hand while he watches from the bar, and it's not like anyone would fuck with  _ that.  _

"Hi, everyone! This song is for—" Jaskie purses his lips together, voice faltering, for the first time in his  _ life  _ not making a joke. "Well, he knows who he is."

"Holy fuckballs, G," Renfri realizes, watching the way Jaskier's eyes flutter shut as he sings. "I think Baby-Face is whole-ass in love with you."

~*~

(Geralt knows, about the love. If it makes him want to pull his own teeth out, he doesn't show it.)

~*~

(Yennefer has three different lipsticks the color of someone's blood. Sometimes Renfri wants to take her thumbs and smear, smear it across her face and beg for them to never touch again.) 

~*~

"What's your biggest fear?" Renfri asks, sprawled on the living room floor and talking around a mouthful of dry pizza crust. It's hard to swallow with her chin tilted up, but if she moves Yen might stop trailing her fingers up and down Renfri's arm.

"Heights," Yen says lazily.

Renfri observes, "You're a shit liar."

"I'm an  _ excellent  _ liar," Yen tells her, "and you're a shit friend."

Renfri wipes her fingers off on her shirt.

"It's that maybe…" Yennefer's voice is measured, almost soothing, like she wants to lull Renfri to sleep and pretend this was a dream. "When I'm dead, nothing I've ever done will have mattered."

_ Heights,  _ Renfri thinks distantly.  _ It's heights. _

"What's yours?" Yen asks her.

"Starving to death," says Renfri. She fumbles for the pizza box and holds it up one-handed, fingers crunching into the unstable cardboard. "Want the last slice?"

~*~

Renfri watches Geralt spin Jaskier around the karaoke stage like they're in a fucking romcom, the entire room whooping and hollering at the fucking show. 

It's stupid. It's so unlike Geralt. He must be crawling out of his skin right now.

"Do you think Geralt's in love with him?" Renfri asks.

Triss' voice comes over the speakers. "Okay, boys, settle down over there! Give it up for Geralt and Jaskier, everybody!"

"I think I need more tequila," says Yennefer, and Renfri pours.

~*~

"I thought you were okay with this," Renfri pants. There are practically claw marks down her thighs, where Yen yanked her panties down.

Yen scrapes her teeth down the side of Renfri's neck. "What do I seem not-okay with?"

"The—he—" Renfri arches her back as Yen rolls her hips, the dildo rocking into her just right. "Geralt and—"

"Don't," Yen hisses. Renfri's never heard her beg. It's astounding, from someone who wants so fucking much. "Talk about it."

Renfri pinches at one of Yennefer's nipples, rolling it gently between two fingers. She's always thought they'd look fucking gorgeous pierced. She'd do it herself if Yen trusted her with the needle.

"Would you trust me with a needle?" she asks, then kicks a foot out with a gasp.

Yen asks, "To do what?" which is interesting, then bites at the crook of Renfri's shoulder like she's anchoring herself.

"Fuck, there," Renfri breathes. Her eyes slip shut, feeling the pleasure seep up through her belly. "You've got the best tits. I've—told you that, right? Fuck. They'd look fucking—fantastic."

"You have the worst ideas," Yen tells her smugly, like she's saying it around something pleasant in her mouth. She noses up the line of Renfri's neck, rumbles in her ear. "Are you going to come?"

Renfri's been coming for thirty minutes. She can't feel her toes. If it always felt this good to not have a body she'd never need one.

"Yeah," she says, and she's never come before in her life if this is what it feels like to come. She always forgets. "Ah,  _ ah— _ Yen, fuck, Christ!"

Yennefer fucking  _ laughs,  _ and doesn't let up until Renfri's panting and her vision's going dark around the edges and oh, fuck, if this is how she  _ dies— _

"None of that," Yen murmurs. "Breathe, princess."

The backs of her knuckles are brushing Renfri's hair away from her sweat-slicked forehead. Her eyes are bright and made to slice things open and oh, fuck, Renfri pushes her onto her back and works at unfastening the strap-on before she can bleed.

"Eager," Yen drawls, fluffing a pillow behind her head. "Are you sure you don't want— _ oh." _

Renfri flips her off with the hand that isn't hitching her leg up over Renfri's shoulder, too busy licking into her to snark back with words.

Yen sighs, a muscle jumping in her thigh, and threads her fingers into the crown of Renfri's hair. Her nails prick at Renfri's scalp and she's so fucking wet from fucking Renfri senseless and Jesus,  _ Jesus.  _

"Add a finger or two," Yen suggests airily, her body rustling the soft sheets that're the nicest thing she owns. 

Renfri shifts to free up a hand, trailing it down the prickly expanse of shaved skin below Yen's belly. 

(She still marvels at it, sometimes. Snags her fingers in her own swath of pubic hair to remember the way it others them for one another.)

The stubble stings her fingertips. She dips them into the soft folds of Yennefer's cunt instead, her tongue lapping upwards to suck at her clit. 

Yen's thighs close in on her, a heel digging into the side of her spine, and Renfri hums with laughter as she crooks her fingers. She loves the feeling of this, the wet slide of fucking someone—fucking  _ Yen,  _ her raspy voice and gentle skin, the way thin fingers feel in Renfri's hair.

"I'm close," Yen gasps, grip tightening. "Faster."

Renfri picks up the pace like she asks, still sucking gently at her clit. Takes in shallow breaths through her nose, eyes shut, her other hand bracing desperately against an expanse of skin. It's so easy to forget everything else.

Yennefer always yelps when she comes—these high-pitched, sharp sounds that make her sound possessed, thrashing on the bed. She pulls Renfri's hair, kicks her heel out against her shoulder, like she's clawing for it.

It's over all at once. Quiet. Renfri wants to bite down on the thin skin of her thigh to get the noise back.

"Well," says Yen, gently pulling Renfri off. Her breathing is still heavy, chest swelling with every breath. "That was fantastic."

Renfri sits up and swipes the back of her wrist across her mouth. "Want round three?"

Yen yawns delicately and stretches out, the bones in her wrists popping as she rolls them in gentle circles, and says, "I'm spent. But you could…"

Renfri's already tugging the dildo free of the strap-on and setting it on a cloth on the nightstand to get taken care of in the morning. She leans over the side of the bed to grab her pile of clothes and rolls on her socks, then looks over when she realizes Yen's not still talking.

"What?" she asks.

Yen is sat up against the pillows, watching idly as she rubs a pillowcase between two fingers. 

Renfri raises her eyebrows and shimmies back into her underwear.

"It's not that Geralt's found someone," Yennefer says slowly.

Renfri glances over, at the careful ease of Yennefer's face, and looks away to finish putting on her jeans. "Then what is it?"

Yen's voice is quiet, a little raw in the throat from the orgasm she needs to shake off.

"Why do you always leave?" she asks, changing the subject.

Renfri stills. The tips of her fingers hurt. She says, "You can't have everything just 'cause you want it."

"I didn't ask you to stay," Yennefer snipes.

"Good," Renfri rasps, and then, "Sorry," when she pulls her shirt back on over her head. 

"Ren," Yennefer says quietly.

Renfri clears her throat, pats her pockets for her keys. Her phone's on the nightstand; she grabs it.

"I'll text you when I'm home safe," she tells the door.

"Lock me in," says Yen.

~*~

Geralt and Jaskier are asleep on the couch. All the lights are off and the TV is playing the same Netflix ad for the new season of  _ Sex Education  _ over and over. The subtitles are on, which is new.

Renfri snorts. Their first night together and they don't even bang it out.

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ [A picture of Geralt and Jaskier exactly how she found them. Geralt is slumped against one corner of the couch with his arm slung around Jaskier, who's got his face tucked into Geralt's neck and is very noticably drooling on Geralt's shirt.] Dumbasses. _

Jaskier's phone buzzes with the notification, but neither of them stir. 

A kinder person would shut the TV off, maybe get them a blanket or something. Renfri kicks off her sneakers and goes to bed.

~*~

(Geralt's eyes blink half-open while Renfri's hovering over him, the soft throw she'd found pooled on the floor at their feet still scrunched up in her hands.

He smirks at her, gentle and affectionate and right on the edge of roasting the shit out of her.

Renfri drops the blanket on his face.)

~*~

Renfri's laying in bed one night that weekend, debating scavenging in the kitchen for a snack when—

"Ah—ah,  _ fuck— _ Geralt! You feel so—"

There it is.

Renfri rolls her eyes at the muffled rumble of Geralt's voice, unmistakable but too quiet to make out the words.

"I am  _ not  _ loud!" Jaskier huffs.

Renfri leans over and bangs her fist on the shared wall, just to really be a dick about it.

Jaskier yelps, "Fuck!" which is followed by a suspicious thump and the loudest, most  _ braying  _ laugh Renfri's ever hear come out of Geralt's mouth.

Christ, he's so gone, isn't he?

Renfri swallows, flopping back down on her bed.

There's a muted conversation, Jaskier's voice dropping quietly enough that Renfri can't understand him anymore, then a louder, "Sorry, Renfri!" shouted through the wall.

"I'm just fucking with you, Baby-Face," Renfri shouts back. "Literally couldn't be more used to it. Get that dick."

"Bold of you to assume  _ Geralt  _ isn't—"

He cuts off with a second, muffled thump in what would be mysterious circumstances, if Renfri didn't know Geralt. She smirks up at the ceiling and, because she's not actually a 24/7 asshole, gives them five minutes before she freaks them out by making a break for the kitchen.

~*~

Jaskier emerges from Geralt's bedroom at the same time Renfri leaves hers the next morning. He's got epic bedhead and is wearing boxers plus the hilarious Grumpy Cat t-shirt that Triss bought Geralt as a gag gift something like three years ago.

Renfri's amazed that Geralt  _ kept  _ the thing, but she probably shouldn't be.

"'Sup," she says, scratching idly under one of her tits.

"Morning!" Jaskier answers brightly, which is so anti-Geralt that Renfri snorts on instinct. "Did you need the bathroom?"

Renfri shrugs. "Nah, knock yourself out."

She wanders into the kitchen, where Geralt's making eggs.

"Hey," she tells him, flopping down on the couch nearby.

"Mm," Geralt answers in the same tone of voice.

Jaskier appears a few minutes later, his face looking pink and fresh, and kisses Geralt on the cheek as he reaches into a cabinet for a container of Poptarts that definitely wasn't there yesterday.

Renfri lolls her head to the side, wondering if she could convince one of the boys to get her Switch for her.

Then Jaskier opens up his Poptarts and tries to eat them  _ raw,  _ which is fucking unacceptable.

"Dude," Renfri says. "We can heat those up for you. We have the technology."

Jaskier freezes mid-bite, then recommits to the whole chewing his food thing. He puts the Poptart down directly on the kitchen table and says, "Oh, I only ever eat them plain."

"That's the most fundamentally evil thing I've ever heard anyone say," Renfri tells him.

Geralt shoots her a glare over Jaskier's shoulder.

"Fun Julian fact!" Jaskier says, though, pointing at his face with both hands. "Room temperature Poptarts are one of like three things I can eat in the mornings without feeling sick. Actually, it's more of, like, the world is a cruel and uncaring place and everyone I love hates me and my body is made of spiders?"

"Oh," says Renfri. "Like if you make Geralt use his words before ten AM."

Jaskier hums brightly and takes another bite of Poptart.

"Toss me one," Renfri says.

Jaskier goes to actually do it, but Geralt snatches it from him at the last second and walks it over for her instead.

"Buzzkill," she tells him warmly, smacking his ass as he stalks back to the stove.

~*~

An entire one and a half hours later, Geralt's sprawled on the couch and watching Renfri play Monster Hunter while Jaskier plays with his hair, when he suddenly asks, "What're the other two?"

"What's that, sweetheart?" Jaskier asks.

"Things you can eat," Geralt clarifies, tilting his chin up.

Renfri snorts, then quickly turns back to her game when a Tigrex roars at her.

"Oh, um, toast? Sometimes with peanut butter." Jaskier's voice kicks up in pace. "And that oatmeal with the dinosaur eggs in it, but not other kinds of oatmeal which I  _ think  _ is psychological because obviously the little dinosaurs make it better, so it's not really a  _ meal  _ so much as it's an  _ experience—" _

"Hm," says Geralt, not unkindly.

"—and actually I've tried the strawberry one where it's zoo animals instead and it's just not the same—"

Renfri turns up the volume on the TV.

When she looks over next, though, it's to Geralt with half a fancy braid in his hair and a smile he's aiming at Jaskier, who's now talking about a fucking farmer's market, maybe? 

Renfri likes Baby-Face fine and all, but this is gonna be a  _ lot  _ to sit in the same room with all the time. At least it's the summer. Don't college kids normally go visit their families and shit?

~*~

A week later, Renfri wakes up to Jaskier belting out "Talking Body" in the fucking shower, so, like. It's probably gonna be a long summer.

~*~

**_G (3:21 PM):_ ** _ Gave J my keys _

Renfri re-racks her weights one-handed, staring blankly at her phone with sweat dripping into her eyes as it sets in.

**_Renfri (3:34 PM):_ ** _ Fuckballs _

**_Renfri (3:34 PM):_ ** _ I gave Yen mine 40 ago _

Geralt calls her immediately.

"I'm at the barn," he says as soon as he answers. "I can make it home in half an hour."

Renfri sops the sweat off her forehead with the hem of her tank. "I'll cut it short here and be there in ten."

"Great," says Geralt. "Thanks."

Renfri grins. "Think they'll kill each other by then?"

"Don't speak that into existence."

"Ooh," Renfri says, striding to the locker room where her bag is stashed. "Maybe they'll make out, like, in a sexy frenemies way? Yen's always so pissy over the summer. I feel like Baby-Face could be into—"

_ "Don't,"  _ Geralt whines.

Renfri cackles and hangs up the phone.

~*~

She finds them both on the couch, sitting on opposite ends and both furiously texting on their phones to avoid eye contact. 

"Hey," Renfri says, tonguing at the inside of her cheek. "Y'all wanna fuck with Geralt?"

Yennefer doesn't look up from her phone. "I'm not making out with Julian."

"Well, that's anticlimactic," says Renfri.

"Are you sure?" Jaskier asks, his voice turning sing-song. "I'm  _ really  _ good at it."

"Absolutely information I'd prefer not to have," Yen tells him. "Thank you  _ very  _ much."

Renfri kicks off her shoes and flops onto the couch between them. "I thought we were friends. Y'all suck."

_ "I  _ was perfectly willing to take one for the team!" Jaskier protests.

Yen scowls, looking over at him with a glint in her eye. "I could hurt him a little. As a prank."

"You  _ tease."  _ Jaskier grins, thoroughly shit-eating, and blows her a kiss.

Yennefer pretends to gag, then calmly goes back to her phone. 

There's approximately three minutes of silence, during which Renfri tries to decide whether or not they could successfully, like, order a pizza as a unit without the claws coming back out, and then—

"Julian," Yennefer asks in the same tone she asks Renfri to check the weather app on her phone, "what's your opinion on that thing Geralt does with his—"

"What if we went back to not talking?" says Renfri.

~*~

_ "'And if we're talking body,'"  _ sings Jaskier from the shower, for the fifth time in twenty minutes, a thing that has been happening every day straight for probably Renfri's entire miserable life.  _ "'You got a perfect one so—'" _

"Geralt," Renfri asks calmly, staring vacantly at the ceiling. "Does your boyfriend live with us now?"

Geralt's scraping off-brand creamy peanut butter onto a piece of toast, despite the fact that he and Renfri share the extremely correct opinion that the crunchy kind is superior in literally every way.

"Hm," he says, and walks out of the kitchen.

He returns half an hour later, wearing different clothes and with suspiciously damp hair.

"Renfri," he says.

Renfri, who is already typing out an emergency text to the girls, says, "'Sup?"

"Can Jas stay with us for the summer?" Geralt asks. "There's a gap in his lease."

"I guess he's not the worst," Renfri agrees, and hits send.

**_Renfri (10:12 AM):_ ** _ One of you has to kidnap me out of the apartment immediately before I kill everyone in it and then myself _

"Aww, thanks, Renfri!" Jaskier says brightly. He's materialized in the kitchen and is happily nibbling at his devil's toast. "You'll hardly notice me, I swear!"

**_T (10:13 AM):_ ** _ Only if you come to the aquarium with me _

"Can't emphasize enough how much I don't believe you," Renfri says. "Do you take shower song requests?"

Baby-Face's cheeks actually go a little pink, which is interesting. "You can hear that?"

**_Renfri (10:13 AM):_ ** _ We're queers who can't drive T how are we getting there  _

"You're embarrassed?" Geralt asks. "You sing at Rivia every week. And make fun of me."

"My shower songs aren't  _ ready,  _ Geralt!" Jaskier is insisting, somehow. "I'm  _ rehearsing,  _ and for your information I am  _ seducing  _ you—"

**_Yen (10:15 AM):_ ** _ Speak for yourself, some of us are competent. _

**_Yen (10:15 AM):_ ** _ Unless you don't want THIS queer to drive you? _

"Thank God," Renfri says out loud, which she isn't sure either of them notice. "See you losers later."

She rolls to her feet and retreats into her bedroom to put on pants, texting one-handed as she goes.

**_Renfri (10:16 AM):_ ** _ I will munch your box for a minimum of thirty minutes AND let you do the thing with the unicorn if you drive me literally anywhere _

Renfri frowns at her clean laundry pile. Is she out of shirts again? She chucks three separate pairs of black jeans onto the floor.

**_T (10:19 AM):_ ** _ I will do neither of those things, but I will buy you whatever you want from the gift shop and also not kinkshame whatever the hell the thing with the unicorn is ;-* _

Renfri gives up on her laundry and sneaks into Geralt's room instead, where—Bingo—she finds a brightly colored backpack stuffed full of clothes and also a bunch of novelty condoms, which is a detail she didn't need or predict but will  _ definitely  _ be using to her advantage one day.

**_Yen (10:21 AM):_ ** _ Deal to both of you. Pick Ren up in 20 and Triss after? _

The point is, though, that this stupid shirt with pineapples on it is probably her size and will look way hotter on her, anyway.

**_Renfri (10:22 AM):_ ** _ Deal. _

She swaps into the shirt and pulls on a pair of jeans, then walks back into the living room to wait for Yen on the couch.

"Sorry, is that my shirt?" Jaskier asks, frowning at her from his perch on the kitchen counter.

"Roommate clause," Renfri says flippantly, leaning her head back against the couch to look at the pair of them. "Someone feed me cereal."

Geralt leans past Jaskier to grab the milk out of the fridge, which earns him a shameless ass-grabbing in the process. His glare isn't anywhere near as withering as he clearly wants it to be.

"Can I at least have it back?" Jaskier asks, probably referring to the shirt and not Geralt's ass, which is now out of reach.

"Maybe," says Renfri, busy watching Geralt dump Coco Puffs into a bowl.

Jaskier shrugs good-naturedly. "Looks better on you, anyway."

Renfri grins and says, "Damn straight it does," which makes Jaskier clutch at his chest dramatically.

"How  _ dare  _ you!" he says. "I did  _ not  _ get soap in my eyes sucking my boyfriend's dick in the shower just for you to—"

"Jas," Geralt pleads flatly.

"—call me  _ straight." _

Renfri makes grabby hands when Geralt, somehow looking incredibly tired and smug at the same time, comes into cereal-handing range.

He makes her pry the bowl away from him, which is probably fair since he literally made her breakfast.

"Thanks,  _ Ger-bear,"  _ she tells him, slurping up a mouthful of milk.

Geralt scowls at her; Jaskier laughs and smacks his hands on the countertop.

"I told you it suited you!" he says cheerfully. "Oh, this is gonna be the  _ best  _ summer."

Renfri's phone buzzes in her hand.

**_yenven333:_ ** _ [A selfie of Yen in her car, sporting an oversized pair of sunglasses and puckering her lips at the camera. She's wearing a black crop top, her bare midriff peeking out invitingly at the bottom of the frame] Omw princess [kissy face emoji] _

"It won't be the worst," Renfri allows.

~*~

Renfri's on the couch destroying randos at Mario Kart when she hears the key turn in the lock at their door. She can tell it's Jaskier by the way he fumbles to turn the key in the lock at the same time he lifts the door a little so it unsticks, and also the way he says,  _ "Balls,"  _ when it doesn't work the first time.

"Hey, Baby-Face," Renfri says when he finally makes it inside. She sticks out her tongue as she aims a banana peel at the Peach behind her. "Where's G?"

"Off with Yennefer." Jaskier plops down next to her. "Ooh, what're you playing?"

"Call of Duty," Renfri deadpans. She drifts around a corner and into first place as they close in on the final lap.  _ "Ha." _

Jaskier says, "Nice try. I'm eighty-seven percent  _ certain _ that one has guns."

"Toad could have a gun," she tells him absently. "Sketchy-ass motherfucker."

She doesn't take her eyes off the screen, but she can hear him leaning forward a little. "Which one are you?"

Renfri swerves around a banana peel. "Toad."

"Oh my  _ God,  _ why does that ghost look like it wants to rim me?"

Renfri snorts, which makes her miss the next item block. Shit. "Boohemouth. You've seriously never played a Mario game before?"

"My mother worried I had an addictive personality," Jaskier says absently. 

Renfri falls down to second place when Peach edges around her on the final bend. She glares at the screen and asks, "Do you?"

"Absolutely," says Jaskier, watching the confetti sprinkle around as the final rankings appear. "Can I play?"

"Sure," Renfri says. She clicks out of online mode and hands him the left Joycon. "I'll pull up the instructions."

"Sorry," Jaskier says, frowning down at the controller in his hand. "Why do I only have half of this?"

Renfri rolls her eyes. "They work as one controller, or you can split them up and use them separately if you gotta. It's a little annoying but they're expensive as shit."

"Oh." Jaskier goes quiet, squinting at the instructions on the screen. "Is the little green dinosaur any good?"

"Sure," Renfri says again. "They're just different weights."

Jaskier clicks on Yoshi and starts scrolling through different cars. "Well, that's a little judgemental."

She side-eyes him and finds him smiling in a really obnoxiously, self-satisfied way that obviously has nothing to do with why Geralt likes him so goddamn much.

"Ooh, can we play on that rainbow map?" Jaskier asks, clicking over to Rainbow Road.

"You don't wanna do that." Renfri tries to take the cursor back over to the easier routes. "Rainbow Road  _ sucks." _

"Well,  _ that's  _ incredibly homophobic."

Renfri tilts her face up to the ceiling. "I could beat you up  _ so  _ easily. You get that, right?"

"Flirting with me will  _ not  _ convince me to let you win," Jaskier informs her brightly.

She rolls her eyes and lets him make an ass of himself on Rainbow Road.

Jaskier takes most of the first lap figuring out the controls and falling off of shit, which stops being funny after a while and just gets annoying, but he's a good sport about it, so whatever.

Renfri laps him twice and finishes first against him and the NPCs. She kicks her feet up on the coffee table and watches him try to slide around a curve without actually using the drift mechanic.

Suddenly, and uncharacteristically subdued, he says, "I could get you another controller, if you wanted it."

Renfri scrunches her face up at him. "You super don't have to do that, dude. I'm serious, they're like seventy bucks."

Jaskier falls off the map again, shrugging at either that or her. "I mean, it's just, I have the money and I feel a little bad because Geralt's being weird about me offering to pay rent—"

"Fuck that," Renfri interrupts. "Pay  _ me  _ rent. You don't even suck my dick."

"I would if you asked nicely," Jaskier says, fluttering his eyelashes.

"Wait a minute," says Renfri. "How the fuck do you have money? You don't have a job."

Jaskier tries to knock another car off the road and tumbles into the abyss himself instead. "Oh, fuck you too, scary dinosaur man. Actually, is that scary dinosaur related to my dinosaur?"

Renfri doesn't dignify that with an answer.

"My, um, parents send me money," he says quietly. He blinks at the screen when the race ends automatically as the last NPC finishes.

"Oh, that's it?" Renfri laughs dismissively, exiting out of the race, and selects the Mushroom Cup instead. "Dude, you don't have to pussyfoot around having, like, parents that fucking love you and shit. I'm used to it."

Jaskier is still watching the screen. "I said they send me money."

Renfri faces the TV too, her throat suddenly itching. "Uh, sorry."

"That's alright." Jaskier's voice brightens again as he drives directly between two item blocks and hits neither of them. "I call it the homophobia tax. Every time my father says something terrible, I tell him I need money for books and spend it on shit he'd hate."

Renfri cackles.

"I think video games for my boyfriend's girlfriend's girlfriend counts," he continues decisively, and immediately lodges his car against a wall. "If you want. Besides, I like this—fuck you  _ very  _ much, ma'am—game and it looked easier to play before."

Renfri drives up behind him and knocks his car into an item block. "Yeah, sure. I'll text you a link or whatever—thanks, Baby-Face."

She catches him smiling at her out of the corner of her eye as he says, "You're welcome," and then launches a blue shell at her from point blank range.

"You little  _ shit." _

"I had no idea what that did, I swear!" 

Renfri growls at him and focuses on the race.

~*~

They finish the Cup and play two and a half more in relative silence, at which point Jaskier zaps all the other cars with a lightning bolt and asks, "D'you think I could tell Geralt I love him?"

Renfri nearly drives off the road. "What the fuck?"

"It's just—" Jaskier sighs like he's a character in a period drama. "I really, really  _ do  _ and I don't think I'm that subtle about it, and I—oh, you did not just lap me, you  _ horrible  _ woman—well, the thing is that Geralt's the sweetest, and I  _ know  _ he cares about me, or at least I think so, but he's so gun-shy sometimes and I don't wanna scare him off or maybe I'm wrong and it's not that serious—"

"Why the fuck are you asking me?" Renfri asks. She pauses the game. Of course Jaskier's in love with him. She knew that. Geralt knows that. She feels dangerously close to going batshit fucking insane.

Jaskier blinks, turning to look at her. "You know him better than anyone."

Renfri stares back. He's got those huge eyes fixed on her and his fingers are thin enough to look breakable and he cards them through Geralt's hair so gently, and Geralt cried the one time she really touched him.

"I thought he was gonna fuck you once in, like, a really embarrassing way and I'd make fun of him about it forever," she says faintly, like she's in the nightmare. "So maybe not that well."

Jaskier smiles sadly and tells her, "So did I. Thanks for listening, Ren."

She wants to break his teeth. She turns back to the TV and unpauses the game.

~*~

"Geraaaalt," Jaskier whines, ducking under a tree branch. "I'm  _ tired.  _ Carry me."

Renfri looks over at Yen and rolls her eyes; Yen returns the gesture and adjusts her ponytail.

"No," says Geralt.

"We've been hiking for  _ hours,"  _ Jaskier complains undeterred, which Renfri's pretty sure isn't true, but she's not wearing a watch.

She rubs at the back of her neck, which is starting to get sticky with sweat. Ugh, she can't believe she forgot a hair tie.

"It's been half an hour," Geralt says flatly.

Jaskier persists, "I'm a delicate flow—"

Geralt suddenly dips down and hefts Jaskier over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

_ "Excuse  _ me!" Jaskier smacks Geralt on the ribs. "Not like this, you oaf!"

"I thought you were tired," Geralt deadpans. "The fireman carry is the more effective—"

"You're horrible! You're so, so mean to your beautiful boyfriend." Jaskier huffs, then wiggles until he can land a second smack on Geralt's ass. "Put me down!"

Geralt helps Jaskier back to his feet, turning so that his face is suddenly in profile—he's smiling warmly, with dopey crinkles at the edge of his eyes.

"Oh," he teases, "feeling rejuvenated?"

Jaskier is wearing a tank top and Geralt's sweatshirt tied around his waist; it swishes dramatically when he whips around and marches ahead with a click of his tongue.

Renfri's gearing up for another eyeroll, but when she looks over again, Yen's smiling at Geralt.

She's surrounded by fucking saps. And Triss, but she's up ahead with a book about native birds and a pair of binoculars, so that's not helpful.

When Yen finally turns her head, Renfri's holding her hair off her neck with one hand and wiping at her face with the hem of her tank top in the other.

"Oh, come here," Yen tuts at her, gesturing with a wrist that has a spare hair tie on it. The scar is shiny and pink in the summer sun. "I'll fix that."

Renfri smirks, kicking a stray branch out of her way to sidle up right in front of her with her ass brushing against her thighs, and Yen hums as she gathers up Renfri's mass of curls with both hands.

Her fingers feel nice against Renfri's scalp. She cards them through slowly—slower than she needs to, to put Renfri's hair up. She twists the hair tie into place and then touches her lips to the shell of Renfri's ear.

"Come with me," she whispers, and darts off the trail into the mess of trees.

Renfri blinks, tracking the bloody red splash of Yennefer's thirty-dollar sports bra against the brown and green smear of forest, and follows.

They lose sight of the trail, but Renfri trusts her sense of direction and Yennefer's pushing her up against the rough bark of the nearest tree, so she doesn't care that fucking much anyway.

Yen noses at Renfri's ear again, nibbling at the cartilage. She giggles like a schoolgirl, traces her hands up and under Renfri's shirt, slots Renfri's bare thigh between her legs.

It feels like the only good secret Renfri's ever had. She tilts her chin up and says, "What if they freak when they realize we're gone?"

Yennefer's thumb brushes along Renfri's nipple. Her voice is husky, playful. She asks, "Haven't you ever wondered how long it would take for someone to miss you?"

Renfri's wearing an old pair of cutoffs. She fumbles to pop the button open one-handed so Yennefer's hand can tuck inside—there's barely room for her to change the angle, but she manages to get a good rhythm against her clit.

_ I'd miss you,  _ Renfri thinks, a little deliriously. There's a mosquito buzzing near her ear and she can feel herself soaking her underwear.  _ I'd miss you before you finished walking away. _

Her hand's in Yennefer's hair. She slips the other down the back of Yennefer's leggings, squeezing her ass and urging her to rock against Renfri's thigh.

She can't say it. She can choke out a gasp and quiver through that five minutes of pure hell before an orgasm with bark scraping against her skin in the woods, but she can't say it.

"Renfri?" Geralt shouts, sounding uncharacteristically hoarse. "Yennefer?"

Yennefer smiles. She whispers, "They like us too much."

"Geralt, they're probably just off having hot lady sex," Jaskier complains. Renfri can picture him dragging his bratty feet in the dirt.

"Don't call it that," Geralt scolds, his voice coming closer.  _ "Yennefer?" _

Renfri opens her mouth to call out to them, but Yennefer shushes her with a finger pressed to her lips.

Slowly, she starts stroking with her other hand again, dragging her nails against the damp fabric where it's starting to stick to Renfri's cunt. They feel good, blunted against her clit, with Yen mouthing at her neck.

Renfri's eyes slip shut, her throat bobbing. She sinks lower against the tree as her hand trails up Yennefer's back and tries to keep quiet. She can feel the strange stretch of fused spine from this angle.

"Renfri?" Geralt calls. "Where are you?"

("They took the bone graft from my pelvis," Yennefer had said the first time she caught Renfri staring, like she knew exactly how fascinating that would be. "I turned eighteen and paid for it myself.")

"Yen," Renfri whispers.

"Shh," Yen murmurs. She's smiling at Renfri's throat.  _ They like us too much.  _ "Shh, princess."

Renfri comes gentler than she means to. Like it wasn't a dirty fuck in the woods. Her lungs are quivering.

Yennefer tugs her hand free and sucks on her fingers to clean them, then does Renfri's zipper up for her. They can still hear Geralt calling for them, but the voices are getting distant again, like they've blown past them on the trail.

"Better go," she says wryly. "Before Ger worries himself into a fit."

Renfri tucks a stray curl behind her ear and leads the way.

~*~

She's in a nightmare—in the woods—not with Yennefer. She goes for the throat and tastes rotten fruit and she wakes up with her phone in her hand and someone—not Geralt—backlit in the doorway.

"Um," asks Jaskier. "Are you okay?"

"Where's—" Renfri wheezes. "Ger?"

"Sleeping, for once. I think the hike actually tuckered him out. And, well, the—you don't want to hear about that." He takes a half step forward. "I could wake him up. Are you okay?"

Fuck. "Am I dying?"

"I think you're having a panic attack," says Jaskier. The hallway light is on. He lets go of the door and steps forward again. "Unless you have a heart condition. Do you have a heart condition?"

"No." Renfri shoves her hands into her hair. She's dying. "Fuck."

Jaskier moves closer, a hand outstretched low, towards the foot of the bed. "Should I stay? I can wake up Geralt, I'm sure he wouldn't mind. I can help."

"Don't," Renfri manages. Her chest hurts and she's gonna throw up and she can feel it in her throat. "He never sleeps."

"I know, right? Honestly, he's so—is this helping? You're not looking at me like it's helping." His hand is on the bed. Like she's something chained up he's approaching. "Do you want me to sit with you?"

"Don't touch me," she snarls. Her hands are fisted in the bedsheet. They were in her hair.

Jaskier holds his hands up. She can see half his face from the light in the hallway; he's afraid of her.

Good.

"I won't," he promises. "I won't, here—"

He sits down on the ground, on the far side of the bed from her.

"See? All the way down here. Just gonna keep you company—unless you tell me to fuck off, in which case I will  _ gladly  _ pretend this never happened." 

God, his voice is so  _ fucking  _ loud. She barely knows him and she can't trust him and Geralt's asleep and she can just—

Renfri closes her eyes and she can see—

"Fuck," she says, opens them. Her phone is on the ground. She hears it clatter when she turns her head, sees Geralt's boyfriend staring up at her with one eye shadowed by the bed. "Fuck, stay."

"Alright." Jaskier smiles without his teeth—it looks stupid on him, wrong. "You know what helps me? I try to list all of my favorites of something. Like favorite bands or foods or—ooh, favorite cities. Or everything I can think of that starts with the letter A, or—"

"That's not what Geralt does," Renfri snaps. "When the fuck have you had a panic attack?"

Jaskier shrugs against the wall. "Horrible stage fright."

"Bullshit," says Renfri.

"You know, you're extra cranky when you're like this. What does my lovely darling boyfriend, who is well known for his gentleness and unparalleled tact in matters of the heart, do?"

Renfri tilts her head up to the ceiling. There's nothing up there that cares about her. It's better than looking over the side of the bed.

"It's five things," she says.

"Very vague," Jaskier says cheerfully. "Easy to replicate."

"Shut up," she tells him. "Are you trying to  _ annoy  _ me out of a panic attack?"

Jaskier thumps his head against the wall. "You don't sound like a dying whale anymore, so maybe it's working?"

"Fuck you." She presses three fingers deadcenter to her breastbone, feels the skin start to bruise. "I'm a princess."

Jaskier asks, "What does Geralt do?"

Renfri blinks. The world doesn't end. She closes her eyes for three seconds, the length of a breath in. When she opens them, Jaskier is still sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up.

"Five things I can see," she says slowly. Her voice sounds wrong but she can feel her tongue against her teeth again. "You, the door, my phone, the vent."

"That's four," he says.

"My hands," she adds belatedly. Asshole. "Four things I can touch. My shirt, the pillow, my hair, my—my wrist."

Jaskier blinks up at her.

Renfri breathes again, feels her ribs protesting. "Three things I can hear. The AC, my voice—"

"And my voice?"

"Unfortunately." She tries to do something with her face to make it better. He leans away a little, so. Fucked that up. "Two things I can smell."

He wrinkles up his nose.

Renfri tugs a lock of hair up to her face and inhales, then sniffs under her armpit next.

"Ooh, I know this! Is the last one taste?" Jaskier asks.

She sticks her tongue out at him, then licks the side of her palm. 

The AC shuts off abruptly. It's replaced by a faint creaking upstairs. Fuck, what time is it?

"Is that better?" Jaskier asks softly.

Renfri massages at her temples, then reaches for the soda can on her nightstand. Empty, fuck.

"Oh! I can get you a drink?" Jaskier offers, anything remotely soothing immediately gone from his voice and replaced by fucking eagerness. Nice while it lasted. "Maybe some water?"

"It's fine," she says. "Not to be a raging bitch, but can you, like, chill?"

Jaskier's voice kicks down half an octave. "Right, sorry. Geralt likes—nevermind. Is this better?"

"Yeah." She puts the can back down. "... Thanks."

"Sure. Is it…" Jaskier hesitates. "Did you have a nightmare?"

Renfri's chest seizes up again. "Don't."

"Sorry, sorry," he says quickly, then slows down again. "Um, do you—I know Geralt stays, but…"

Renfri slides back against the pillows, burrowing up to her chin in the blanket. She can only see the top of his head from this angle. "Do you really get stage fright?" 

"One time in middle school I fainted in the middle of a musical." Jaskier tilts his face up, making eye contact. "Apparently my classmates Weekend at Bernie'd me until I came around."

Renfri's lips twitch. She wonders if he can see it. "But you're, like,  _ good.  _ You love hamming it up at karaoke."

"That's the thing, right?" Jaskier says softly. "If you love something, it can hurt you."

(There's a hand on her throat.)

"Plenty of shit hurts anyway," she rasps.

Jaskier brushes his hair away from his face, then drapes that arm over his knees. "Might as well love something, then. If you want me to stay, could I have a pillow, maybe? I'm a delicate flower you know."

They don't have any windows. The light from the hallway casts the room in a permanent uneven murk.

(It's her own hand.)

"What's your boy gonna think when he wakes up without you?" Renfri asks.

"I think," Jaskier says, warmer than the bad light or the sweat sticking to Renfri's shirt, "our boy will be happy that I was there for my friend."

Renfri tosses down her spare pillow—and the blanket. She tugs at the sheet until it comes loose and crawls under that and scoots across the mattress until she's on the nearer side to him, laying on her belly and peering over the edge.

Jaskier slumps down, cocooned in the blanket with the pillow tucked between his head and the wall. He's looking up at her and the angle's wrong for the light to hit him now, but she's adjusted to the dark and she can see him blinking slowly.

There's the childhood superstition, right? That if you drop an arm or a leg off the side of the bed, the horrible thing that lives underneath will grab it.

Renfri used to dream about becoming the monster. 

She reaches, carefully, fingers splayed open, as far as she can manage without tipping over.

Jaskier smiles, still no teeth, and brushes his thumb across her wrist.

~*~ 

There's noise in the kitchen. Renfri startles awake, tangled up in the sheet and her mouth tasting extra like roadkill. She reaches for the can of soda on her nightstand—empty. She knew that.

It sounds like Geralt's cooking. She grabs her phone off the floor, but it's dead.

Jaskier is still asleep on the other side, the blanket wrapped tightly around him and his hands clutching the edge of the pillow near his cheek. He looks even younger like this, with his eyelids fluttering. 

Fuck, it's humiliating. Renfri's so fucking stupid. She let some fucking kid she barely knows hold her hand and sleep on her floor and talk her out of her nightmare and it's bad enough when  _ Geralt  _ does it, and he's—

It's always been Geralt-and-Renfri. It's his fault Renfri's here, probably, staring at a deeply  _ fucking  _ annoying theater kid at whatever the fucking time it is in the morning.

She drops her phone on Jaskier's face.

_ "Ow!"  _ Jaskier scrambles to an upright position, yanking the blanket up protectively even though he's fully clothed. He starts to say something else, but then he locks eyes with her and falls silent.

"What do you want from me?" Renfri asks.

"For you to not  _ hit  _ me with things, for starters." Jaskier drops the blanket into his lap. "What do you even mean?"

Renfri repeats, "What do you  _ want  _ from me? Why did you help me?"

Jaskier tilts his head, blinking at her. "I don't want anything from you."

"Everyone wants something," says Renfri. She holds out her hand for her phone, which he gives her.

Jaskier wets his bottom lip, staring like he's trying to wait her out. When it doesn't work, the words come out slowly. "I guess… friendship, is that specific enough? Someone to play video games with when Geralt's not around. For you to tolerate me so I can live with my boyfriend for a little while. Free drinks at the bar."

Renfri criss-crosses her legs, narrowing her eyes at him. "That's it?"

"That's it," he confirms, then looks down. "And, well—everyone wants to be liked, don't they?"

Renfri swallows thickly and says, "I don't give a fuck who likes me."

Jaskier's smile hovers on thoughtful for half a second, then slips right into gratingly cheerful. "Spoken like someone who cares very much! I'm gonna go take a shower—I'm pretty sure the carpet has mold in it? Do we have a landlord for that kind of thing? Oh my  _ God,  _ hold that thought, I've gotta pee so bad."

He hops to his feet, kicking at the blanket to free himself, and darts across the hall.

Jesus. Renfri rolls her eyes and wanders into the kitchen.

Geralt's frowning at a pancake on the stove, nudging at it with the corner of a spatula.

"Hey," Renfri tells him.

He grunts at her.

She flops onto the couch and then leans her head back against the back, feeling her neck stretch and crack.

"Is…" Geralt clears his throat like there's more, but it takes a long time to get out. She rests her cheek on the cushions facing him patiently. "You're okay?"

Renfri feels it in her stomach. That twisting feeling like wringing out a towel until all the water squeezes from it in a violent burst.

"Yeah," she says, around the cotton taste in mouth. "Yeah, sunshine, I'm okay."

"That's great!" Jaskier says enthusiastically, prancing into the kitchen. There's a welt on his cheek. "Is now a good time to mention I'm coming on the beach trip?"

Well, fuck. It's not like Renfri can say no to that  _ now,  _ can she?

~*~

"I blame you for not nipping this in the bud," Yen says tersely, digging her elbow into Renfri's thigh to drive the point home.

"I can hear you," Jaskier cheerfully reminds them.

Triss says, "You guys, it's not a big deal! Jas agreed to pay for the extra room and we'll all fit in Yen's car. It gets better gas mileage anyway, so we might  _ save  _ money. I honestly don't know why you insist on the truck anyway, Ger."

"I'm a better driver," Geralt mutters, which is definitely super true if you care about shit like following traffic laws and  _ not  _ about getting to your destination thirty percent faster than Google maps says you should.

"You know, that's really hurtful, Geralt," Yen says, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've never gotten a ticket."

Renfri grins at her. "Yeah, but how many times have you flirted your way outta one?"

"I've never gotten a ticket," Yen repeats, shooting her a pointed glare before turning back to Triss. "Can we just divide up the money and get back to me and Julian not being in the same room?"

"I love how you say my name," Jaskier says. "It's like you just ate one of those jellybeans from Harry Potter and you're trying to figure out if it was earwax or not."

Yen does a full body eye roll.

"Guys," Geralt says plaintively.

Triss ignores all of them in favor of double-checking her Excel spreadsheet. "Okay, ready. Jaskier, are you sure you're okay paying for the whole extra room? I mean, it just seems unfair."

"Why," Renfri asks. She reaches over and steals an Oreo from the plate in front of Geralt. "He's sleeping in it."

Four separate eyebrows raise at her at once.

"What?" she asks around a mouthful of cookie.

"Um, me and Geralt are sharing a room?" Jaskier says.

Renfri stares at him. "Uh, no you're not? I always room with Geralt."

"Right," Jaskier says, tapping his fingers on the table. "But seeing as me and Geralt are planning on having a lot of very ambitious sex on this trip and you and Geralt are  _ not  _ having a lot of very ambitious sex ever, and you and Yennefer  _ did  _ in fact fuck in the woods last week—am I making my point? It just makes more sense to sleep where you're fucking?"

Yen adds, "And since Triss doesn't fuck anyone, she gets the single."

"Exactly. Thank you, Yennefer," says Jaskier.

Renfri leans away from her. "Why the fuck are you agreeing with him?"

Yen parts her lips in confusion. "Why aren't you? You don't want to room with me?"

"I wanna room with Geralt," Renfri snaps. "It's one thing to let him tag along or whatever, but you can't just—"

"It doesn't make any sense!" Yennefer leans back in her chair with a scoff. "Why the hell do you want to play musical fucking chairs any time someone wants to have sex? It's already going to be enough of a pain for me and Geralt to figure out."

"It makes sense because it's always been this way! Since before we knew  _ any  _ of you," Renfri argues, turning back to Geralt with her eyes flashing. "You get it, right? You wanna bunk with me?"

Geralt stares at her, deer in headlights.

"Geralt," Jaskier says quietly. And it's just—it's just so fucking  _ unfair.  _ His bottom lip is jutting out and everything.

"... I don't care," says Geralt, a little helplessly.

"You don't  _ care?"  _ Jaskier asks incredulously, which is at least more interesting than the kicked puppy schtick. "For fuck's  _ sake,  _ Geralt, at least say it to my face if you'd rather stay with someone else."

Triss turns her palms up on the table, "Maybe we should just—"

"Oh, please, Julian," Yennefer snorts. Her eyes flick over to Renfri. "At least your name's on the table."

Renfri bristles. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Yennefer says coolly. "You've just made it very clear how much you value our relationship."

"Oh, fuck you." Renfri bares her teeth. "That's not what this fucking is."

"Then what is it?" Yen asks, blinking rapidly, mascara-thickened eyelashes fluttering. She tilts her chin up a little. "Why don't you want to stay with me?"

_ (If someone loves you,  _ Renfri had wanted to ask.  _ Does that mean you can destroy them?) _

She looks away from the wobble in Yennefer's bottom lip and turns to Triss instead, who's watching the rest of them with a worried furrow in her brow.

"If I can't stay with Geralt," Renfri says, "I want my own room."

Triss looks at the others briefly, then nods. "That's… fine. Yen, can I stay with you?"

Yennefer tells her, "If you can tolerate it," and then her chair screeches against the fake kitchen tile when she stands up to storm away in a flutter of sheer black skirt.

She slams the door to Geralt's room.

Renfri presses her fingertips into the splitting pain above her eyebrow.

"Uh," says Geralt, slipping away towards the back. "I'll go… talk to her."

"Your funeral," Renfri mutters.

"Don't say that," Triss scolds, an edge creeping into her voice.

Renfri glances at her, surprised, but she's shutting her laptop with a sharp click.

"I'll text everyone how much they owe me," she announces. Her lips are pressed in a thin line as she stuffs her computer into her bag and slings it over one shoulder. "If you can behave like adults for the three fucking days of  _ vacation  _ we're supposed to have."

Renfri's too stunned to say anything before Triss bails out the front door.

Jaskier slides the package of Oreos to her across the little table. 

She shoves two into her mouth at once, wiping the crumbs away with the back of her hand.

_ "Whew,"  _ Jaskier says in the same tone he says nearly everything. "I feel like that went really well! You know, except for basically all of it. Actually, quick question, how liberal is this beach because I do have some concerns—"

"Jesus  _ fucking  _ Christ!" Renfri snaps.

"Yep." Jaskier scoots away from her. "That's fair, yeah."

Renfri puts her head down on the table, staring in the vague direction of Yen and Geralt's hidden conversation. "No, s'not."

"... No," Jaskier agrees. "No, I guess it's not. I really haven't done anything to you besides, like, exist, you know."

"I know, Baby-Face," she mutters. Her cheek is smushed against her hand and the words come out a little muffled.

Jaskier's fingers tap on the table again. He asks, "Why don't you just tell her the truth?"

Renfri turns her head, perching her chin on her knuckles. "Would you?"

He tilts his head, blinking owlishly.

"I'd tell Geralt," he says.

The thought of it makes stomach acid creep up Renfri's throat. She swallows it back down and crunches her fingers into the plastic cookie tray and tells him, "It's a good town. You can be yourself."

Jaskier smiles faintly and tilts his head the other way, gesturing at the TV. "Thanks, Ren. Wanna beat me at Mario Kart until you feel better?"

She flashes her teeth at him.

~*~

**_Renfri (9:57 PM):_ ** _ Venmo'd the $$ _

**_Renfri (9:57 PM):_ ** _ Sorry for like. My personality _

**_T (10:04 PM):_ ** _ I like your personality. I'll forgive you when you talk to Yen like a grown adult _

**_Renfri (10:08 PM):_ ** _ I'll miss our friendship, T. Love & light [kissing emoji] _

**_T (10:09 PM):_ ** _ [six eye roll emojis in a row] _

~*~

**_shrike_princess:_ ** _ [A picture of a unicorn beanie baby listed on eBay] He's yours if you start talking to me again _

**_Yen (12:03 AM):_ ** _ I hate you. _

**_Yen (12:07 AM):_ ** _ [a link to a much larger and more expensive stuffed unicorn] I want this one. _

~*~

Yennefer drives them to the coast; Renfri rides shotgun and controls the music while Geralt clenches his jaw so tightly she can hear his teeth grinding from the back seat and patiently reminds Yen of the speed limit every half hour. 

Jaskier, who filched Renfri's Switch from her bag, keeps asking her where to find moons in Mario Odyssey. 

"Dude, I don't fucking  _ remember,"  _ Renfri complains, twisting around to glare at him. "Do you know how many there—oh, wait, check behind that waterfall."

He does like she tells him and finds a power moon inside a chest. Fuck, now he's gonna keep bugging the shit out of her.

"Thanks, Renfri!" he says cheerfully.

"Ugh," she says, facing forward again.

Triss rustles the pages of her book as she turns pointedly to the next one.

They pour out of the car and into the hotel lobby, where Triss and Yennefer handle check-in. Renfri sinks into an armchair near the elevators and Geralt perches on the armrest next to her; she leans over and bites his shoulder.

"I like this shirt," he says absently, then reaches out to grab Jaskier by the arm to stop him from walking straight into a pillar—which, in Renfri's opinion, would've been fucking hilarious except for the fact that he's still holding her Switch.

She spits Geralt's sleeve back out.

Jaskier plops down at Geralt's feet without acknowledgement, so she kicks lightly at the back of his head.

"You know I'm gonna want that thing back, right?" she asks.

Jaskier's too busy turning Mario in a T-Rex.

"Jas," Geralt says.

"Mhm?" he hums off-handedly, not looking up.

"I'm gonna redo my hair," Geralt tells him casually. "Should I go with green or hot pink?"

Jaskier twitches when a chain chomp nearly hits him. "That sounds great, sweetheart."

Geralt raises both eyebrows in exasperation.

"Julian!" Yennefer calls sternly from across the lobby—not even skipping a beat when his head snaps up immediately. "I forgot one of my bags in the car. Go get it for me."

Jaskier tosses the Switch into Renfri's lap and darts off to get the keys from her. 

"What the fuck," says Geralt, which Yen apparently hears because she blows him a kiss before turning back to the receptionist, who waves her and Triss forward.

Renfri shrugs, sleeping the Switch and tucking it into her bag. By the time Jaskier's back with Yennefer's suitcase, they've gotten their keycards and are ready to set up in their rooms.

For Renfri, that just means plugging her Switch in and dumping her duffel bag in one corner. She flops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, thinking about what she wants to do next, when Yennefer knocks on the door frame before poking her head inside.

"Hey," she says. "The others want to go see a movie."

Renfri lifts her head up questioningly.

"I want ice cream," says Yennefer.

Renfri pats her pockets to make sure she has her cell and wallet with the keycard in it. "I'm in. Think our fave place is still there?"

Yennefer snorts. "It better be."

They walk the two blocks to the oceanfront and then along the boardwalk until they find the shop. It technically sells frozen custard, which is the kind of fact that Geralt would care about in his weird grumpy man brain, so Renfri kind of hears it in his voice when she orders chocolate-on-chocolate sprinkles in a waffle cone.

Yen's wearing a black sundress with sharp cutouts exposing her ribs; the skirt rides up her thighs when she tucks her legs up under herself on the beach and dips her spoon into the orange half of her swirled cup.

She eats like someone's taking a picture. A quick flash of teeth to keep her lipstick from smearing on the little plastic spoon.

Renfri bites the tip off hers, chewing on the sprinkles thoughtfully. There's sand in her leg hair.

"Ask me something interesting," Yennefer says, watching a group of squealing kids kick a beach ball around.

Renfri watches them too, processing the laughter. None of them have scars on their wrists.

"What's the worst thing a person can be?" she asks.

"Boring," Yennefer answers.

One of the kids trips and eats shit; another one helps them up.

"Why?" Renfri asks.

"Because what's the point?" says Yennefer. "What's your answer?"

Renfri licks a strip of sprinkles off her ice cream. The sprinkles are always the best part. It's shit you have to eat them first.

"Dishonest," she says, and laps at a sticky spot at the corner of her mouth.

Yennefer takes a second dainty bite. "Not cruel?"

"No," Renfri tells her. "You didn't say cruel either."

"I don't trust anyone who doesn't think they've ever been a little cruel." Yennefer licks her thumb and leans forward to wipe at a smudge on Renfri's chin. "It makes me think they're dishonest."

Renfri feels a trickle of something running down the edge of her wrist. She looks at Yennefer's braless tits, her hairless calves. She says, "I've been cruel. I'll be it again."

"Mm," Yennefer hums in acknowledgement. Her lips curve up around the edges and her eyes glint in the sun the same way the waves do. "But never boring."

She leans away again and braces one hand in the hot sand. Her nails, this time, are the exact purple of every shiner Renfri's ever had.

"If someone wrote a story about us," Renfri asks slowly, "who would it be about?"

"Me," Yennefer says, no hesitation. Her eyeshadow sparkles when her eyelids flutter. "Everyone wants the story to be about themselves."

"I don't," says Renfri.

Yennefer nestles her cup in the sand and traps Renfri's bottom lip between her teeth, sucking back gently. Loose fingers wrap around Renfri's ankle, caressing at the protrusion of bone.

Yen pulls away, voice rumbling, and murmurs, "I think you're lying, princess."

Renfri forgot to close her eyes.

~*~

Renfri fucks her, biting at the soft curve of her earlobe. A possessive hand sliding along the side of her neck, a little mean, a little like the monster under the bed saying exactly what it is.

She loses a sock somewhere—maybe behind the headboard—and falls asleep alone.

~*~

Renfri is tossing a Frisbee back and forth with Geralt on the beach, kicking up hot sand under her feet and trying to not spray any of it onto Triss's towel, when Yennefer and Jaskier both suddenly stand up at once.

"Well, we'll see you three later," says Yen. "Time to go."

Renfri looks over at them mid-Frisbee pass; she hears Geralt's grunted apology when it (she assumes) goes wide.

"Sorry," she says, squinting at the suspiciously Yennefer-esque sunhat that's materialized on Jaskier's head. "Did you say  _ we?" _

"We booked a spa day!" Jaskier says cheerfully.

Geralt tosses the Frisbee. It hits Renfri on the tit.

"Together?" she asks.

Yen arches an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Alone?" asks Geralt.

"Triss says she wants to read," Yen explains.

"You didn't invite us," says Geralt.

Yennefer rolls her eyes. "The pair of you would rather  _ die  _ than let anyone get within five feet of you with a face mask and we all know it?"

"You're hanging out with Jaskier," Renfri says. "Alone."

Yennefer shrugs and repeats, "Spa day," which isn't, like, comforting.

"Well, we better get going!" Jaskier says in a tone so pleasant that it makes Renfri think he might be in a hostage situation. "Bye, honey, I love you!"

Oh, yeah, definitely a hostage—

"Love you too," Geralt says. "Have fun. Text when you want dinner."

Renfri whips her head around. Geralt's just  _ standing  _ there, turning pink because the sunscreen she slathered on him earlier is wearing off, smiling completely casually like he didn't just say—

"What the fuck?" Renfri asks.

"They probably won't kill each other," says Geralt. He pauses. "... Right?"

"No, what the  _ fuck?"  _ Renfri repeats. The air feels thin, suddenly. "Do you know what you just said?"

Geralt blinks. "I can't tell them not to hang out, Ren."

"Since when are you in  _ love  _ with him?" Renfri's eyebrows creep up alongside the pitch of her voice. "Since when do you  _ say—" _

Triss makes a show of slamming her book shut and fleeing down the beach; Renfri cuts off and watches her turn into a speck by the time Geralt finally fucking talks.

"Uh, I… I don't know?" he says. "Why does it matter?"

_ "Fuck  _ you," Renfri snaps, which makes his shoulders roll back. "Did you mean it?"

Geralt's eyes are flicking between her and the groups of people on the crowded beach. He hates attention.

Good.

"Yeah," he says. "I did."

Renfri swallows. Fuck, why  _ does _ it matter? Why does it matter that she lives in her nightmares and he gets to say  _ I love you  _ and she gets to taste the unbearable fucking sweetness of decay between her teeth, when it isn't her story?

_ ("I've been cruel," she said. "I'll be it again.") _

"Do you love Yen?" she asks.

Geralt's standing perfectly still. He watches her and says, "Yeah."

She feels her head try to shake. Her teeth want to be sharp and it doesn't matter, and her voice is small when she asks, "Do you love me?"

It's so nice outside. She hates that it's so nice outside, and that they're so clean. He's standing too far away from her for it to really hurt and he won't move closer because he doesn't want it to, and she gets to be the monster who lunges or nothing.

"You should know that," he tells her roughly. "You should know I do."

Renfri takes a step forward. "You never say it."

"Neither do you," he says.

She tilts her head. "Yeah, I do."

"As a joke." Geralt parts his lips, looks away. "Never like you mean it."

"What if I can't mean it," she asks him and, oh, fuck, she's standing so close to him now, tilting her chin up to look him in the eye. He didn't shave this morning. "We aren't supposed to be able to mean it."

He won't look, though. His jaw is clenched; he'll have a headache later. Maybe his little boyfriend who loves him will fuck it better.

"You're not making sense," he tells her, soft furrowed eyebrows. "Why is this bothering you so much?"

(Renfri cried too. She mouthed at his throat and hid her damp cheeks in the sweat pooling in the crook of his neck when he rocked up into her, and if he noticed he never said a fucking word, and she hated him for it with every part of herself that wasn't filled with relief.)

"It was you and me, Ger," she says desperately, her voice cracking like she's weak. "It was—I thought you  _ saw  _ me, that we were the same and we would—that I would've  _ killed  _ them—"

"We don't know that," Geralt snaps. He finally looks at her. "You don't know if you would've gone—"

"Don't fucking  _ patronize  _ me!" Renfri snarls. "I'm so  _ fucking _ angry all the time and—and Yennefer turned her trauma into ambition and you turned yours into indifference and mine's still this fucking anger all the way through and I've got nowhere to put it!"

Geralt says nothing. His eyes are wet in a way she can't reach; they're standing in their bare feet in the sand and his cheeks are pink, from how beautiful it is outside.

"You left me," she tells him.

"I didn't leave," says Geralt. He lifts a hand between them, looking down at it like he's already not sure what good it'll do. "Ren, I'm right here."

Renfri shakes her head slowly, blinking at him until she can see again. "He changed you. This wasn't supposed to… it was good, right? When it was the four of us."

Geralt wets his bottom lip, frowning. Carefully, he says, "Jas didn't change me. He just… helped me a little. Be more like who I wanted to be."

"Happy?" Renfri croaks.

He glances in the direction Jaskier and Yen vanished before.

"I want you to be happy," she tells him. Her throat hurts, like she tried too hard to breathe. "I just wanted it to be in a way I understood."

"You could understand it," Geralt says, a little like he's begging.

She's breathing through her nose.

"You can be angry, Ren." Geralt rubs a hand up and down his own arm. "Jesus Christ, you have a right to be."

"What if I can't be anything else?" she asks.

He doesn't answer her.

"I thought you knew me," she says shakily. "I'm not like you, Geralt, fuck, you should've let me do it, you should've—"

"You have a life," Geralt says. She's never been more afraid of him. "It can be a good one. It doesn't have to be like mine."

Renfri feels her throat bob. "What's it like?"

"Terrifying," he says. A smile flutters across his lips. "And confusing, and sometimes I get so pissed off I just—but…"

She wants to stain her hands silver for him and she wants him to sleep through the night even when she needs him, and she wants, more than anything, to be something he can understand all the way through.

"But you give anyway," she realizes. "You hand something over and you let them hold it, and they could hurt you."

"But it's worth it," Geralt agrees. He's looking at her like that, like she knows something she could crush in her fist. 

And she does, suddenly. In the dark roots of his hair and his obnoxious midnight laugh and the little unicorn charm on a chain that he bought for Yen her last birthday. 

"I was wrong about you," she says.

His eyes are so soft; he tilts his head like a puppy. "I wasn't ready. You've… been a good friend."

Renfri swallows around the dryness in her throat and rasps, "I don't know if I'm ready."

"It's okay," he promises.

Renfri nods, and takes a step back, and another, until her weight shifts when a foot hits the Frisbee instead of more sand. She bends down and picks it up, brushing the sand off of it before she gestures a mock-throw.

Geralt puts up his hands to catch, and that should be the end of the story.

~*~

It isn't.

~*~

Yennefer and Jaskier don't kill each other, which is almost more upsetting than the bloodbath everyone expected. Renfri spends dinner emotionally hungover and shovelling green beans into her mouth, eyeing Geralt from across the table. 

"How was the beach?" Jaskier asks brightly. "Sweetheart, you're so  _ sunburnt." _

Geralt grunts noncommittally, twitching when Jaskier presses his fingers into the cherry-tomato of his bare arm.

"You never forget your sunscreen," Yen says suspiciously, her eyes narrowing at him. "What happened?"

Renfri scrapes her fork across her mostly-empty plate.

"Nothing," Geralt tells her. "I just forgot to reapply."

"Geralt," Jaskier asks with exaggeratedly wide eyes. "Are you  _ dying?  _ Yennefer, he's dying."

Yen leans over to fold her hand over Jaskier's where it rests on Geralt's forearm. "We'll mourn you, my love."

"I liked it better when you two weren't friends," Geralt says flatly.

Yennefer's hand whips up to her mouth. "We are  _ not  _ friends! Take it back!"

"Oh, really?" Jaskier crosses his arms in a huff. "Do you let just anyone help you pick out your next—actually, I believe that—"

"We're in  _ polite  _ company, Julian!"

"No company you're a part of can be that polite, Yennefer."

"Geralt, I swear to God I'm going to—"

~*~

And then Renfri's laying on the floor in Yennefer and Triss's hotel room, head pillowed on Yen's thighs. It's a little too late at night and the mixed drinks were the wrong kind of strong at the bar.

Yen traces her fingers along Renfri's hairline, tucking stray strands back into place. They meant to fuck; Triss is on her second book of the day in Renfri's room so they could fuck.

"I get nightmares," Renfri tells Yen's fingertips, when they skirt by the corner of her eye. "Really fucking bad ones. That's why I don't wanna sleep here."

"I know," Yen says evenly. "Julian told me."

Renfri scowls, her head snapping up. "What the  _ fuck?" _

Yennefer snorts. "Did you really think I forgave you just because you bought me a stuffed animal?"

Renfri's eyes narrow reluctantly. Yen slips three fingers under her chin and tilts her head back down.

"Why didn't you say something?" Renfri asks.

"I wanted to let you," Yen says. She shifts so her thigh is better supporting Renfri's neck. "I thought it'd be kinder to pretend I didn't know already. But now I don't think that's how you'd want it."

Renfri's chin tilts up, up, until she can see Yennefer's eyes. They're gentle, sometimes, but she never remembers them that way first.

"Do you want someone who lets you be kind?" Renfri asks.

"I want someone," Yennefer says slowly, "who wants me to be whoever I am."

Renfri blinks, letting her eyes stay shut for a long moment. When she opens them, Yennefer is smiling.

"Geralt's in love with you," Renfri tells her.

"I know." Yennefer traces her thumb along Renfri's bottom lip. "That's nice of you to say."

They fall silent, after that, until Renfri's eyelids are drooping on their own and Yen murmurs, "Time for bed, princess."

Renfri stretches and climbs to her feet and makes her way to the door. She braces her palms against either side of the frame, and thinks about turning around. 

"I wouldn't care, you know," Yennefer says. "If you woke me up or you needed something. I don't know why you think I wouldn't help you."

Renfri closes the door behind her.

It's not that kind of story.

~*~

(It will be.)

~*~

They're supposed to head out the next day. Renfri's on her way to get the car keys from Yen when Jaskier pokes his head out of his room and says, "Morning, Renfri!"

"Morning, snitch," she says.

"I finally googled what a shrike is the other day," he tells her without missing a beat. "Horrifying little bastard creatures—perfect for you. Can I play your Switch in the car?"

Triss opens the door right before Renfri can knock and says, "I call shotgun."

"Motherfucker," says Renfri. She tilts her head back to glance sidelong at Jaskier. "We can do multiplayer."

"Great! Good thing we have that second set of Joycons," Jaskier says brightly. "You know, the ones I bought you. Which I want you to keep in mind while you reevaluate our friendship in the wake of certain  _ very well-intentioned  _ actions."

Renfri rolls her eyes and shouts, "You're still a snitch!" through the door, which he shuts in her face.

"Oh, don't kill him," Yennefer says with a pout, propping her chin up on Triss's shoulder. "If anyone gets to, it should be me."

Renfri holds out her hand. "Just gimme the fuckin' keys."

~*~

The drive home marks the end of yearly vacation. Renfri works three doubles in a row to make up for the days she took off and talks shit with Baby-Face, who apparently has nothing better to do than plant his ass at the bar all day and gossip with his friends.

It's been a weird summer and there's too much of it left. Yen's been restless since they got back, or maybe Renfri's just tired—of listening to songs she's not supposed to overhear in the shower, of filching dinosaur oatmeal for dinner at midnight when she trudges home and needs to get the taste out of her mouth.

She's been hiding in her room a lot, when she's in the apartment, which works out fine until Jaskier peeks in one day and says, "Roommate clause."

Renfri looks up, pausing her game.

Jaskier's fingers tap on the doorframe. "Is the makeup in the vanity yours and can I borrow it?"

"Uh," says Renfri, waving a hand in front of her face. "Do I  _ look  _ like I wear makeup?"

"There's not a right answer to that question!" Jaskier answers cheerfully.

She rolls her eyes. "It's Yen's, but unlike you I'm not a snitch."

"Oh, get over it," he says with a dismissive wave, which is so fucking irritating that Renfri tosses her Switch onto the bed and stalks after him into the bathroom. "I'm the reason you're still getting laid. You and that very scary girlfriend of yours should be thanking me."

Renfri watches him pluck an eyeshadow palette out of the cabinet, then swipe the little applicator thingy through a glimmering shade of dark purple, which is probably the closest thing to subtle that Yen owns.

"I'm not even totally sure she's my girlfriend," Renfri says. She narrows her eyes when he blends a second color into his crease. "You're better at that than I am."

"I'm not dignifying either of those with a response," he says, which lasts five seconds. "Actually, I am. Do you think this color looks good on me, though? I usually go a little more neutral."

Renfri shrugs. He does look  _ almost  _ fuckable when he's dragging it up, but she's still pissed at him for spilling to Yennefer and doesn't feel like stroking his ego.

"You know you could, like, keep some of your shit here if you wanted, right?" she says.

Jaskier puts the eyeshadow down and twirls an eyeliner pencil between his fingers; he does everything in the same order that Yen does, skipping her contouring routine. "I don't own any makeup."

"Oh," Renfri says. "You just seem actually good at it."

He's uncharacteristically quiet while he lines his upper lashes, pale mouth hung open in a soft 'O.' The last time Renfri tried doing her makeup, her brain gave her the fantastic suggestion of stabbing herself in the eye. 

"It's easier if it's not yours," Jaskier says eventually, blinking at his reflection. "You know, if it's stage makeup, or, 'oh, haha, we're all drunk and Julian stole my lipstick as a joke.' It's… worse, if you just like it."

Renfri's been forgetting to shave her legs for seven years.

She clears her throat and says, "The purple looks really good."

He smiles at himself, or maybe at her, and grabs the mascara. 

Apparently he can't talk and do anything to his face at the same time, which Renfri feels like should be catalogued in a "known weaknesses" section of a Wikipedia page. It's between the mascara and the lipstick, though, that's the problem.

"I feel like, and please understand that even as the words leave my mouth I cannot  _ believe  _ I'm saying them—" Jaskier uncaps one of two lipstick tubes, frowns thoughtfully, and puts it back down. "I feel like you don't give Yennefer enough credit."

Renfri was sitting on the edge of the tub, sort of half-heartedly, but she digs her fingers in the side now. "What the fuck?"

Jaskier says, "I just mean—well, on a personal level of course she's terrifying and I  _ do  _ still fear for my life whenever I'm alone with her—"

"Yeah, duh," Renfri agrees. "It's really hot."

"—but she's—that's a given—but she's also, you know—I have a level of  _ respect,  _ and also I have eyes and I wasn't raised in a bog unlike you and Geralt."

"Insult to bogs," says Renfri. "What's your fucking point?"

Jaskier sighs dramatically and turns around, bracing both of his hands on the edge of the sink. His eyes look  _ fantastic  _ and his mouth looks incredibly fucking stupid without any color to it.

"I think she'd be good to you," he says softly. "If you let her."

Renfri's teeth hurt; she puts a hand up to her jaw and presses on the joint until it unclenches. Her voice is thick. "I'm not fucking stopping her."

Jaskier laughs and turns back to the other lipstick. "It really is remarkable how similar you and Geralt are."

"Don't say that like it's an insult," she snaps.

"I'm not," he said lightly. "You know… I have no idea what happened to you—I can't even imagine and I won't ask you to tell me. I just… as your friend. I hope you see yourself as more than a woman who has nightmares."

He's fucking insufferable. Renfri gets it, in that moment. Why Geralt's in love with him.

"What else am I supposed to be?" she asks.

Jaskier shrugs, all seriousness suddenly gone. "How should I know? Do you think I should go with this  _ plum-y _ color, or is that too, hm, matchy-matchy with the eye color? Does Yennefer leave these here because they're not very good?"

"How should I know?" Renfri parrots sarcastically, which gets her an exaggerated huff.

"Honestly, Renfri, I say  _ all  _ these beautifully insightful things and you won't even—"

"I like the purple one," says Geralt, who's leaning in the doorway.

_ "Geralt!"  _ Jaskier gasps, shoving at his chest. "I'm not  _ decent!" _

Geralt raises an eyebrow. "You're fully dressed."

"No lipstick," Renfri supplies helpfully.

"Hm," he acknowledges, then turns back to Jaskier. "Looks really good."

Jaskier sticks out his bottom lip. "It was supposed to be a  _ surprise.  _ You know, a big reveal? You're so nosy!"

"I have to pee," Geralt tells him flatly. "There's only one bathroom."

Jaskier sighs, squeezing past him with the lipstick clutched in one hand. Geralt takes a full step into the room and stares at Renfri, who grins at him and makes no move to get up.

"Ren," he says patiently, rolling up his sleeves one at a time.

She rolls her eyes and leaves so he can piss in peace. Jaskier is leaning up against the far hallway wall, playing with the lipstick tube with both his hands and smiling faintly.

"Hey, Baby-Face," she says, and leans over to sock him on the shoulder. He winces, but looks up at her. "You're pretty okay."

"Thanks," he tells her. "I like being your roommate."

She leaves him in the hallway and retreats to her room, where she flops onto the bed with her phone.

**_Renfri (8:57 PM):_ ** _ Can I come over _

**_Yen (8:59 PM):_** _I've_ _got a shitton of work left to do._

Renfri glances up at the ceiling. She can hear the indistinct sounds of a conversation across the hall now that Geralt's out of the bathroom; they sound happy. 

They sound happy a lot.

Renfri clicks over to her conversation with Triss.

**_Renfri (9:02 PM):_ ** _ You know, everything would've been fine forever if it hadn't been for that meddling twink. _

**_T (9:03 PM):_ ** _ Oh, that's a little unfair. _

Renfri shakes her head and goes back to Yennefer.

**_Renfri (9:03 PM):_ ** _ I'll keep you company, if you want _

~*~

Renfri flops over on the couch and pillows her head on Yen's thighs, holding her Switch above her head.

"You know," Yen drawls, "I can't actually type if you do that."

Renfri grumbles and sits up again, then flops facing the other direction with her toes tucked under Yennefer's legs instead. She wiggles them, making Yen twitch.

"Do you seriously do this all day?" she asks. "I'd go fucking insane."

Yen hums, clacking away at the keyboard pointedly.

"Do you listen to music?" Renfri prods. "I could put on some music. Does your brain not just scream at you all the time if it's too quiet?"

"Not really," Yen mutters.

Renfri puts her game down and shuffles over so her cheek is propped up against Yen's shoulder. "I'm annoying the shit outta you, aren't I?"

"Yes, absolutely." Yen turns her head and presses a kiss to Renfri's temple. "I'm glad you're here."

Renfri smiles faintly, then yawns when she tries to snoop on whatever boring document Yen is working on for grad school. 

Maybe she'll just take a nap instead.

She wakes up groggy with a kink in her neck and Yen murmuring in her ear.

"I'm finished, princess," she says. "It's late."

Renfri's heart is in her throat. She keeps her eyes half-shut, nosing at Yen's cheek, and whispers, "Ask me to stay."

Yen leans away a little. "What?"

Renfri opens her eyes, searching Yen's face. There's a kind of pain to it.

"Ask me to stay," she says again.

Yen breaks into a smile, blinding and unexpected. Her eyes are so big and the eyeliner is smeared, and she says, "Stay with me, Renfri."

Renfri kisses her. Her lips are smooth with lipstick, gentle. She cups Renfri's face with one hand and slides the laptop out of the way with the other and then slides that one up Renfri's thigh, tickling the hair.

They break away after a few minutes and Yen suggests, "Bed?"

Renfri pulls them both to their feet and leads the way, then falls onto her back when Yen pushes her there. Her legs draw up, making space for Yen in between them, a hand tangling in her hair when she mouths at Renfri's neck.

They undress slowly, between kisses and fingers skimming under clothes, until Yennefer's rubbing a palm against Renfri's clit while she rustles through the drawer in one of her nightstands.

"What do you want?" she asks.

Renfri rocks her hips against the friction. "The green one."

Yennefer holds up the dildo, a little thicker than two of her fingers. "With a vibrator?"

"Nah." Renfri tilts her chin up when Yen settles above her again, offering her mouth up for Yen's teeth. "That's—fucking  _ tease." _

Yen chuckles, nestling the toy between Renfri's folds again, just barely pressing at her entrance, before pulling away. "You know I wouldn't without lube."

"I'm so wet," Renfri tells her, maybe a little nonsensically. Yen just hums, reaching for the bottle. "Fuck, I get so—that's  _ cold,  _ asshole."

Yen rubs a lube-slick finger in a gentle circle around Renfri's clit. She kisses the corner of her mouth and murmurs, "Sorry, princess."

Renfri's eyes slip shut. Yen works the toy in slowly, the cooling texture of the lube melting against Renfri's warm cunt. She really is so wet. She hates the moment when it pops inside, always has, but Yen slides a hand up her belly and strokes at her tit and then it's good, it's so good, being here.

She'd live here forever. She's gonna stay, when it's over.

Yen moves the hand on her breast so she can curl over her and kiss at the thin skin of her throat. It's hard for her to position, sometimes, with all the metal in her spine. 

Renfri tries to put herself in places it's easy for her to be.

She scoots up the pillows and cups her hand on Yen's jaw, thumbing at the corner of her mouth.

Yen smiles, turns her head to kiss Renfri's thumb and fucks her a little harder.

She comes slowly, can feel it for a long time. In the tips of her fingers when she drags them up the surgery scars, in the roots of her teeth when she mouths at Yennefer's shoulder. It's like being sung to sleep, she imagines, with something that's almost like a memory in the corner of her brain.

Her cunt is sopping, soaking Yen's fingers when she shudders and Yen shushes her and kisses at the corners of her eyes and the tip of her nose and she bites back a growl that starts to rumble up her quivering throat. She wants to be gentle, once, while she can.

"Another?" Yen offers, when it's over.

Renfri shakes her head, stilling Yen at the wrist. "What do you want?"

Yen slides the toy out gently and sets it aside, then grabs another one from its bag in the drawer—her favorite, sparkly and metallic with a gradient of colors and a pronounced, grooved spiral. 

"Should've guessed," Renfri teases, tonguing at the inside of her cheek.

Yennefer rolls her eyes and onto her back.

Renfri climbs on top of her, plucking the dildo from her hand. She sets it aside, though, and dips two fingers between her folds first.

She needs a little more warmup. Renfri kisses down her neck and chest, then sucks a nipple into her mouth. 

Yen hums encouragingly, sliding her clean hand into Renfri's hair. Her other smears lube and pussy juice down Renfri's ribs, then cups her ass and squeezes.

Renfri breathes out sharply through her nose, working her fingers in and out slowly. Fuck, she's so warm, so soft against the blunt threat of Renfri's fingertips. 

"You want the strap?" Renfri asks, curving her fingers up, nuzzling at the soft droop of one perfect tit.

"Your hand's fine." Yennefer gasps, back twitching. "Oh, fuck, put it  _ in." _

Renfri huffs out a laugh and reaches for the dildo, then lubes it up. She squirts more onto her fingers and dips them back inside, which makes Yen twitch again.

"Hypocrite," Renfri teases.

"Dick," Yen spits back, no heat to it.

"Getting there, baby." Renfri smirks. "Be patient."

Yen's eyes flutter shut. She's sweating a little, already. She doesn't seem like someone who should sweat, but she's always fucking covered in a sheen of it by the end. It's the kind of thing you'd only know about her from up close.

Renfri finally presses the toy into her, letting Yen savor it. Her head is thrown back with a dark halo of hair splayed around her and a thin moan slips out of her lips when her hips start to rock, feet planted but slipping against the comforter.

Renfri lets her fuck herself, just gently angling the toy to help hit the right spot. She crawls up Yen's body, one wrist bent backwards, and bites at her earlobe.

"Greedy," she whispers smugly, and feels claws down her back.

"Someone has to be," Yen tells her. "Oh, fuck, that's good. Oh, don't you think—it'd be boring?"

Renfri sucks a hickey onto the crook of her neck. "What would be?"

"Being—" Yen cuts off when Renfri starts to move her hand, thrusting in counterpoint to her hips. "Satisfied."

Renfri pauses, eyes flicking up to Yennefer's face. Her teeth are glinting in the light and her eyeliner is smudged under her bottom lashes, and her nose is scrunched up in pleasure.

"Think you'll ever find out?" Renfri asks.

"No," says Yennefer, her eyes still closed and her throat bobbing when she gets close. 

Renfri loves her throat; presses the length of her index finger against the hickey she left and marvels at the way her thumb fits perfectly in the little hollow that deepens when Yennefer breathes in, and thinks,  _ Oh, Jesus Christ, is this what it'd be like to love you? _

"Ren," Yennefer says. She doesn't beg.

Renfri says, "You'll have mattered."

Yen squirms underneath her, presses into the hand on her throat, and asks, "What?"

"When you die," Renfri says. She's watching her own wretched body, how it does kindness so clumsily that it looks like cruelty. "You'll have mattered to me. You don't have to be afraid."

"I'm coming," says Yen, and she does—with a wracking sob that sounds like Renfri is ripping something out of her, that sounds like she's killing her. 

Renfri mourns. She lets her hand slip to the side and looks at the bruise underneath and imagines, for a moment, that her fingers left it there. 

Yennefer comes down from it slowly, until she finally lolls her head to the side and looks at the two toys on the nightstand and says, "Fuck. Will you clean those? I'll change the sheets."

Renfri blinks. Her hands are empty. She climbs off of Yen and grabs the toys, carrying them into the bathroom. She turns the sink on full-blast and waits for the water to heat up, listening to the soft sounds of Yen rustling in the hall closet for a blanket that isn't soaked with pussy juice and lube.

Renfri scrubs the toys clean and puts them on top of the medicine cabinet to dry overnight, then pads back over to the bed.

Yen is already curled up with the old sheets dumped in a pile on the floor. She asks, "Do you have a side of the bed?"

Renfri swallows. So much for afterglow. "I flop around like a dying fish."

"Flop around like a dying fish on the left," Yen says evenly, and pats the spot next to her. "I like the right."

Renfri crawls into bed; they're both still naked, which they might as well be, but it makes Renfri shiver. She burrows further under the covers and worms her way under Yen's arm.

Yennefer tucks her closer and starts to pet her hair. "What does Geralt do? When you have a nightmare."

There's something tight in her chest. Not the panic, but close. Renfri closes her eyes and says, "I'll teach you."

~*~

Renfri's in the nightmare. She's twisting and running so hard her lungs will burst and something's holding her, there's a voice—

"Shh, princess." A hand on her face. "I'm— _ ow,  _ shit!"

Renfri scrambles away, jams the corner of the nightstand into her lower back and nearly flips over off the bed. She's in the bed. Yen is staring at her, clutching one hand protectively in the other.

(She's not in the nightmare, but she is.)

"It's me, Renfri," Yen says. Her voice is a little strained. "You're safe."

Renfri gasps for air, feels her lungs clench. Wheezes out, pulls her knees up to her chest.

(She was googling how to get bloodstains out of the carpet when he met her.)

"Let's do the thing, okay?" Yen coaxes. Renfri can barely see her. There's a window but no light coming through it. "Five things you can see?"

("It's for a book," she lied.)

"I would've—done it," Renfri rasps instead. Looking at the hand, swiping her tongue over her canines. "I would've—killed them."

("Hm," he said. "Did you know you're old enough to be tried as an adult?")

Yennefer's voice is fierce and watery with pain. She says, "I would've helped you."

(She never asked how he knew that.)

Renfri crawls across the bed. Disgusting, creaking bones. She folds them up against Yennefer's side and rests her head against her chest and feels what it's like to breathe.

"I'm so angry," she whispers. "I'm so fucking angry all the time. It never goes away."

"I know," Yennefer soothes. Delicately, she brushes her lips against Renfri's forehead. "I know. Be angry enough to be happy."

"How?" Renfri croaks.

Yennefer slides them both down the pillows. "I can't tell you. But I'll be here."

Renfri closes her eyes.

~*~

Light comes through, in the morning. Renfri blinks awake to it and sees all the colors in Yennefer's blue-black hair, the golden undertone of her skin. She takes up the wrist of the hand carding through her hair and looks at the crescent-shaped pattern of bruises on the meat of the palm.

At least she didn't break the skin.

"Morning, princess," Yen murmurs through a contented yawn.

She took off her makeup last night, after they fucked. And it's—

Renfri's not going all fucking cliche, 'she looks so much more beautiful without it' or whatever. Yen's fucking gorgeous and she looks like a fucking wrathful goddess with weaponized cheekbones when she does a full face of makeup. 

There's the compromise, though, and a rant about the patriarchy somewhere in there, and what Renfri knows more intimately than that—which is that Yennefer uses her beauty however it'll get her what she wants, which is how she uses everything.

She doesn't find it useful here, with acne scars on her cheeks and a mouth that looks a little lopsided without the lipstick to gentle it.

Renfri unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth and says, "Sorry about your hand."

"I shouldn't have touched you like that," Yen answers easily, and wriggles out of bed. "It won't happen next time. I think it's an ice cream for breakfast kind of morning, don't you?"

Renfri follows her over to the kitchen, which is half the size and twice as nice as her and Geralt's. Her back is turned, bare and shifting as she pulls random shit out of the freezer to get to the ice cream.

"I think I've got Rocky Road," she says, but she puts peanut butter down on the counter next to an ice cube tray. "It might be a little freezer burner, though—I can't even remember when I got it."

And Renfri thinks about her fear of starving and how many soft things she's sunk her teeth into and wondered if they'd break, and all the times she's been a goddamn liar.

"Peanut butter's good," she says.

Yen starts loading things back into the freezer.

"Hey, Yen?" Renfri asks quietly. To the formerly twisted spine and the chill seeping out from the open door. 

There's the low thrum of the ice maker, the very edge of a bruise turning the color of selfish nails. The silent promise of a full mouth and clean teeth.

There's nothing on Renfri's throat. She says, "I think I want the story to be about me."

Yen turns around, her smile secret and beautifully crooked, and hands her a spoon.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering, Yennefer's favorite dildo is [Mystic from Bad Dragon](https://bad-dragon.com/products/mystic) (NSFW link, obvs).
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I love Renfri deeply <3 I have a part three planned that introduces Ciri into the verse! Follow me [on Tumblr](https://yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com/) for updates :D
> 
>  **Spoilers related to trigger warnings:** Renfri and Yennefer have a pretty brutal discussion about Yen's _past suicide attempt._ Renfri's questions are callous and what most people would consider inappropriate, though Yen doesn't appear particularly upset by the line of questioning. 
> 
> Renfri's _homicidal ideation_ is largely historical; she fantasizes about killing her childhood abusers, but doesn't have any thoughts about hurting anyone in the present moment.
> 
> Renfri has frequent _nightmares_ about her trauma, which are not described in detail. These nightmares trigger _panic attacks_ which are described more extensively.


End file.
